MIDDLE EAST: Israel must "definitely" retain its Jewish character, the Palestinian Authority President Mr Yasser Arafat said in a Hebrew newspaper interview published here yesterday. The single word was hailed by the newspaper as an unprecedented concession.
The comment was interpreted by the liberal Ha'aretz daily as meaning that Mr Arafat was not seeking to fundamentally change Israel's Jewish character by demanding a mass influx of Palestinian refugees. He was therefore ready to defuse one of the key disputes that led to the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000, the collapse of the Oslo peace process, and the eruption of the current Intifada.
Nevertheless, the newspaper said, Mr Arafat refused to specify how many of the four million Palestinian refugees he was insisting should be given a "right of return" to Israel.
Past and present Israeli military intelligence chiefs have this week been publicly debating whether or not Mr Arafat could ever again serve as a peace partner, and specifically whether he has been bent on overwhelming Israel demographically. Israel has a population of 6.7 million people, some 5.5 million of whom are Jewish.
The Israeli government is adamant that Mr Arafat is a terrorist determined to destroy the Jewish state, and the Bush administration has effectively severed direct relations with him after branding his Palestinian Authority as being "compromised by terrorism."
Tellingly, at a briefing yesterday afternoon, a very high-placed Israeli security source said there was "no information" that Mr Arafat "gave orders for terror attacks", and added that he categorically rejected the widely held assessment that the PA leader was intent on Israel's demographic destruction. "No, not at all," the source said, adding that he believed Mr Arafat had "no long-term strategy" whatsoever.
The source, who asked to be identified as a "most senior security official", said Mr Arafat was to blame for failing to "do anything at all" to try and prevent terrorism, and for continuing to channel funds and preserve in key positions people who he knew were engaged in attacks on Israeli civilians.
It was plain, this official said, that Mr Arafat was not prepared to order the 40,000 men in his various security apparatuses to confront Hamas, Islamic Jihad and those of his own Fatah loyalists, who were attacking Israeli civilians. But if the PA leader gave way to leaders who were "brave enough," he said, "they could achieve a huge success in a very short time." The fate of the Gaza Strip, after Israel's anticipated withdrawal next year, he said, would depend on how the PA chose to act.
In his Ha'aretz interview, conducted at his Ramallah headquarters, Mr Arafat asserted that the PA would ensure calm in Gaza after an Israeli departure, by fighting Hamas if necessary. He would act, he said, "even against anyone from Fatah who comes out against the law". The Israeli security source seemed to doubt that this would happen, and warned that Israel might soon launch a large-scale military invasion of the Gaza Strip to try and thwart repeated rocket attacks across the border into Israel. He noted that a new, advanced rocket was fired from Gaza into southern Israel only yesterday.