Showdown

NASSER ISHTAYEH/AP
Two Israeli tanks move down the streets of Anabta in the West Bank

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The rightists argued for hours with ministers from the relatively dovish Labor Party who didn't want to burn Israel's bridges to the man with whom they had co-signed the Oslo accords. At 1:30 a.m. last Tuesday, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, of Labor, tried to convince Sharon that the government didn't need to make a declaration linking Arafat to terrorism. Instead it could just carry on with its military actions, as it had done throughout the intifadeh. Sharon thumped his fist on the table. "Arafat's giving shelter to terrorists and financing terrorism," he said. "Those are the facts, and there's no way to ignore it. We have to convince the entire world."

But first Sharon had to convince his Cabinet. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who like Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the now disintegrating Oslo accords, argued angrily that it would only make things worse to declare that Arafat was sponsoring terrorism. "Somebody could understand from this that it's O.K. to kill Arafat," Peres said. "I'm not asking for Arafat's life," Sharon said. "I'm talking about forcing him to take responsibility."

The Cabinet agreed to leave room in its decision to change its mind later, if Arafat did start to crack down on the terrorists. Still, when it came time to vote on the statement that Arafat's Authority "supports terrorism," the Labor ministers walked out. The Cabinet declared Force 17, one of Arafat's security units, and the Tanzim, the militia wing of his Fatah Party, "terrorist organizations" that "will be acted against accordingly."

Those steps have already begun. Cabinet ministers tell TIME the Israeli army has been ordered to produce a plan for tougher military actions against the Palestinian Authority in case Arafat doesn't play ball. Sources close to Sharon say that the Prime Minister has begun secret talks with the National Religious Party and other right-wing factions that may enter his coalition if Labor quits.

A right-wing coalition would make things easier for Sharon in the Cabinet room, and in any case Israelis are moving swiftly toward the right as the violence of the intifadeh continues. In a poll last week in Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, 53% of Israelis surveyed said they believed Arafat should be deposed, while 24% thought the Palestinian leader should be killed. But Sharon remembers the divisions that shattered Israeli society when a right-wing government, in which he was the Defense Minister, took the army into Lebanon in 1982 without left-wing support, and when a left-wing government signed a peace deal with Arafat and ignored the views of the right. Sharon is proud of the coalition between Likud and Labor and is committed to working to keep it intact.

What happens next depends mainly on Arafat. By the end of last week his forces had arrested 180 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists, but only five of them were from the 33-person wanted list Israel had drawn up. Those around the Chairman were making excuses for why he wasn't acting more aggressively. They argued that the strictures Israel continues to place on Palestinians, preventing free movement between Palestinian cities and access to jobs in Israel, create a climate in which it is politically dicey for Arafat to do Israel's bidding. Last week Palestinians spat on Arafat's policemen when they came to arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists. In Gaza's Zeitoun neighborhood, police put Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin under house arrest and then had to deal with two days of riots. One young Hamas supporter died from a wound sustained in a clash with Palestinian police. Says Saeb Erakat, Arafat's chief peace negotiator: "Sharon is tying Arafat's hands and legs and blindfolding him. Then he's pushing him into the sea and telling the whole world, 'Look, he can't swim, so he's not a partner.'"