Arafat's gunmen open fire on Palestinian reform meeting
Gunmen loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat opened fire today on a conference of Arafat’s Fatah movement, in the latest sign of factional infighting among the Palestinian leadership.
The Fatah conference was convened to discuss proposals for reform in the Palestinian Authority and to call for elections to the Palestinian parliament, which have not been held for 15 years.
The meeting of about 70 legislators and senior Fatah officials followed weeks of demonstrations against the disarray in the security services and corruption in the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
About 20 armed men broke into the conference on the first day of the week-long event, firing their weapons into the air and above the stage where speakers were seated.
No one was injured in the gunfire, but the meeting broke up. Several delegates met the gunmen to discuss whether the conference could continue.
The gunmen identified themselves as members of the Al Awda Brigades, a small militant group. One of them told the Associated Press they believed the meeting was part of a conspiracy directed against Arafat.
The incident occurred a day after members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a violent Fatah offshoot, torched the governor’s offices in the West Bank town of Jenin, demanding financial support from the Palestinian Authority.
The same day, another group kidnapped three foreign church volunteers in Nablus – an Irishman, and American and a Briton. The hostages were freed after the militants received a promise of an unspecified payment for themselves and comrades held in Israeli jails from the Palestinian Authority, officials said.
Similar unrest in Gaza last month prompted Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia to submit his resignation, which he rescinded last week after Arafat pledged to give him greater control over the police and internal security services.
Some Palestinian officials attributed the unrest to a challenge to Arafat by Mohammed Dahlan, a former security leader in the Gaza Strip. They said Dahlan’s demands for reform were meant to undermine Arafat’s position.
One Fatah official in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had been offered US 20,000 (£11,000) by a Dahlan ally to work against Arafat. He said he refused the offer.
Today, Israeli and Palestinian newspapers picked up interviews Dahlan gave to Persian Gulf newspapers criticising Arafat.
If Arafat fails to carry out real reforms within the Palestinian Authority within 10 days, 30,000 Palestinians will demonstrate in the streets of Gaza, Dahlan was quoted as saying.
“Arafat is sitting on the corpses and destruction of the Palestinians at a time when they are desperately in need of a new mentality,” he was quoted as telling the Al Watan daily in Kuwait.
