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West Asia : Pressure on Arafat |
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The Palestinian crisis is reported to have blown over and the Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurie, who had submitted his resignation to the Palestinian Authority President, Yasser Arafat, has taken it back. This follows some reforms announced by Arafat, like giving the Prime Minister more police powers, but keeping the intelligence services to himself. His resignation last week followed widespread unrest at charges of corruption in the Palestinian Authority and the appointment by Arafat of his nephew, Moussa Arafat, to a top Gaza security post.
The pressure had mounted on the veteran Arafat since gunmen sparked chaos and anarchy in Gaza by kidnapping a series of Palestinian officials and foreigners and demanding the President reform his security forces. In the last incident, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade gunmen seized a security building in the Gaza town of Khan Younis, demanding Arafat reinstate dismissed comrades and that he fire his nephew Moussa Arafat.
In the meantime, protests are also growing against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against his plan to withdraw from the Gaza settlements. On July 26, tens of thousands of Israelis formed a human chain more than 80 km long in protest at the government’s withdrawal plan. The chain started at the northern settlement of Nissanit and ended at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The Israeli Prime Minister has vowed to withdraw by the end of 2005. There are almost 7000 settlers living amid 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza. The Government is offering the Jewish settlers a replacement house of similar quality anywhere inside Israel proper or free land.
At the same time, Israel’s Defence Ministry has mapped out a new route for the separation barrier in the West Bank that heeds a Supreme Court order to reduce hardships for Palestinians and runs closer to the 1967 borders. The decision to redraw the route is in line with an order by the Israeli Supreme Court to make the barrier less disruptive of Palestinian lives. But, it ignored a ruling by the International Court of Justice that the barrier was illegal and must be completely torn.
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