Arafat leaves Ramallah for first time in six months
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today left the West Bank town of Ramallah for the first time since Israel confined him there six months ago.
At the helipad in his West Bank headquarters, Arafat climbed into a Jordanian air force helicopter that was to fly him to three of the hardest-hit areas in Israel’s six-week military offensive Bethlehem, the battle-scarred Jenin refugee camp and the city of Nablus.
Before getting on the helicopter, Arafat denounced a decision by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party earlier today to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, despite Sharon’s request that a vote be delayed.
‘‘This is the destruction of the Oslo agreement,’’ Arafat said of the vote. The Oslo agreements are a set of interim pace accords between Israel and the Palestinians negotiated in the mid-1990s.
Arafat last left the Palestinian territories on November 25. In early December, his helicopters were destroyed in Israeli air strikes, leaving him effectively grounded.
Israel said at the time it wanted to pressure him to rein in Palestinian militants. Israel gradually tightened the confinement, and for 34 days, starting March 29, restricted him to a few rooms in his headquarters, while soldiers besieged the compound.
Israel lifted the travel restrictions on Arafat as part of a U.S.-brokered agreement that freed him from confinement at his headquarters.
The Likud vote followed the withdrawal of some Israeli reservists already pulled back from the Gaza Strip after the government said it had postponed an expected offensive in the Palestinian territory.
In Bethlehem, nearly 1,000 people attended the first Sunday services in the Church of the Nativity since the end of a five-week standoff there.
