ISRAEL: In a stinging and significant personal defeat for the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat, his entire PA cabinet was forced to resign yesterday after parliamentarians made plain they were about to vote no confidence in it.
The parliamentary revolt - arguably the greatest political humiliation Mr Arafat has suffered since being elected PA head six years ago - was led by members of his own Fatah faction of the PLO, the dominant force in the 88-member Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), who resisted prolonged and passionate appeals from him, and rejected an attempted tactical manoeuvre on his part.
Many of the 55 Fatah legislators, and activists outside the parliament, have for months been urging Mr Arafat to oust several cabinet ministers whom they allege are corrupt.
In June, the PA president oversaw a minor reshuffle, appointing five new ministers but leaving most of the old guard untouched. He attempted to win formal backing for this cabinet team when the PLC first convened on Monday, but quickly realised the vote would be no formality, and postponed it twice - to Tuesday, and again to yesterday.
In a final effort to win over the unhappy legislators, Mr Arafat yesterday set a date - January 20th, 2003 - for presidential and parliamentary elections, and then argued that this process rendered his cabinet a mere transitional body, which consequently did not require the PLC's approval.
However, this argument was rejected by the PLC's legal committee, and Fatah legislators also indicated that they considered the election call to be something of a trick and did not believe the elections would take place on the promised date.
Realising that the die was cast, the cabinet ministers submitted their resignations to avoid the still greater embarrassment of the no-confidence vote, and Mr Arafat now has two weeks to name a new cabinet.
Mr Qadura Fares, one of the leaders of the Fatah legislators, insisted that "this is not a message to Arafat. It's a message to the Palestinian people that finally the parliament has some teeth."
However, other Fatah officials made plain that the unprecedented revolt was indeed a clear message to the PA chief - both to oust self-interested ministers and to delegate more authority.
Mr Mahmoud Abbas, Mr Arafat's unofficial number two, has been named as a possible prime minister, but has indicated he would take such a position only if his boss genuinely wanted him to do so, and not if it was created as a result of political coercion.
Aides to Mr Arafat indicated last night that he was furious with his maverick Fatah loyalists, and was not about to concede real authority to anyone.
However, if he cannot satisfy the legislators with a new ministerial team, the PA will be left limping - further destabilising a regime already hugely weakened by an Israeli anti-terror military onslaught that has culminated in the current reoccupation of most major Palestinian cities.
And such destabilisation, leading to Mr Arafat's own decline and replacement, is precisely what Israel and the Bush Administration have been pushing towards - and what Mr Arafat is determined to avoid.
After Mr Arafat issued a call for an end to attacks on Israeli civilians at Monday's PLC session, an entirely unmoved Bush Administration made clear it still hoped for his removal.
Israeli Communications Minister Mr Reuven Rivlin gave short shrift yesterday to talk of a PA crisis or new elections.
So long as Mr Arafat represented the Palestinians, he said, "We will continue to treat them as a people led by a terrorist."
Two Palestinians, suspected of being Israeli collaborators, were reported shot dead yesterday by masked gunmen from the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in two separate incidents, Palestinian sources in the northern West Bank said. - (AFP)