U.S. To Arafat: Spare the Rod and Spoil the Terrorist

TEL AVIV: Lending support to recent charges by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Yasser Arafat is doing nothing to restrain violence by militant Islamic groups, U.S. officials said they fear that the Palestinian leader has lost control of Hamas, the group that claimed responsibility for the Tel Aviv suicide bombing last Friday. In one-on-one meetings earlier this year, U.S. officials ranging from President Clinton to Acting CIA Director George Tenet took Arafat severely to task for releasing imprisoned Islamic guerillas who had been involved in earlier terrorist attacks against Israelis, The Washington Post reports. While U.S. officials denied Israeli charges that Arafat explicitly gave the go-ahead for attacks such as last week's explosion in a Tel Aviv caf that killed three Israeli women, electronic recordings of conversations between Arafat and Hamas leaders show that by not expressly forbidding a resumption of suicide bombings, Arafat gave extremist leaders the impression that he would support such a decision, the paper said. The conversations followed on the heels of a trip to Washington in early March where the Palestinian leader was criticized for looking the other way while Hamas and the Islamic Jihaad geared up for fresh terrorist attacks. In a rare interview, Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Moshe Yaalon warned today that more attacks against Israelis will be in store over the next couple of days unless Arafat, currently traveling in Sri Lanka, directly forbids the bombings from taking place. But Arafat is not in an accomodating mood. "He can't tell me what to do," he snapped, scoffing at an exortation by foreign policy advisor Dore Gold that he return to Israel to deal with Palestinian extremists. While Arafat was staying out of sight, Palestinian police in Hebron formed a human chain Monday to separate Israeli troops from stone-throwing protestors, even as their counterparts in Bethelem stood idly by as 200 Palestinians battled with Israeli soldiers armed with tear gas and rubber bullets. Seventeen Palestinians were injured in the clash.