A FURIOUS Yasser Arafat emerged on Wednesday from five weeks confined to his Ramallah compound denouncing Israel even as it withdrew its troops to the cheers of Palestinian fighters.
As Arafat was freed fighting broke out at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem – where another siege has been under way – sparking a fire and provoking the Palestinian leader to accuse the Israeli government of a launching an attack.
Israel withdrew most of its troops and armour from Arafat’s compound within hours of the Palestinians handing over six high-profile prisoners to Anglo-American custody in a United States-brokered move to end the siege.
The Palestinian leader’s supporters kissed and hugged each other, shouting anti-Israeli slogans and promising to defend their leader to the death.
The Israeli pull-out began after a convoy of armoured diplomatic vehicles worked its way through Ramallah’s dark and deserted streets carrying the six men to imprisonment in Jericho.
Since the end of March, when Israeli tanks crashed through the perimeter walls of the Ramallah compound, Arafat has been virtually cut off from contact with the outside world.
British and US negotiators, who spent most of the day hammering out the details of the transfer of the six men to the Jericho jail where they will be kept under the supervision of British and US warders, finally took custody of the prisoners after completing identity checks to ensure they had the right men.
Among the Palestinian demands agreed to onWednesday was a letter of guarantee from the British and US governments giving assurances that the six prisoners will never be handed over to the Israeli government.
But there was a fresh threat to the deal when Palestinian leaders said they would meet to decide whether to free two of the men as they have not been convicted of a crime.
Four of the six men were accused of assassinating Israeli minister of tourism Rehavam Zeevi last October. One other, Ahmed Saadat, is said to be the leader of the faction that ordered the killing. The sixth man is Fuad Shobaki, who allegedly masterminded the delivery of a shipload of weapons intercepted by the Israelis in January.
The siege became a contest of wills as Israel demanded that Arafat hand over Palestinian fighters it accused of ”terrorism” as it did not trust him to keep them in custody as he was required to do under the Oslo peace agreement.
Under pressure from President George W Bush to end the siege, Israel agreed to break the impasse by allowing British and US warders to oversee the jailing of the six.
A makeshift tribunal convened inside Arafat’s compound last week found the four men guilty of involvement in the murder of Zeevi.