Israel ponders Arafat's summit appearance

U.S. officials put pressure on Sharon to allow trip to Beirut

LEE HOCKSTADER THE WASHINGTON POST

JERUSALEM -- Under concerted U.S. pressure, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears ready to allow Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to attend an Arab summit in Beirut starting Wednesday, lifting Arafat's four-month-long confinement in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli officials said Monday night.

Sharon's government is expected to decide today whether to allow Arafat to travel to the two-day meeting.

The Israeli officials warned that any major Palestinian terrorist attack before then would make it politically impossible for Sharon to allow the Palestinian leader to leave Ramallah, which has been surrounded by Israeli forces for months. But if today is quiet, they said, the likelihood is that Arafat would be allowed to depart Wednesday for his first trip to Beirut since an Israeli assault forced him to depart in 1982 for Tunisia.

"This is the least worst option the prime minister faces given the need to maintain the unity of his government and not to make a rift with the Americans based on an issue that is not really serious," said an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

An Israeli decision to permit Arafat to travel would represent a shift in Sharon's position, which has been that Arafat would not be permitted to attend the summit until he took strong action to prevent further terrorist attacks on Israelis and moved toward a cease-fire.

Arafat's Palestinian Authority canceled a scheduled meeting of top Israeli and Palestinian security officials Monday that was to have considered a compromise cease-fire proposal drafted by the U.S. special Middle East envoy, Anthony Zinni. The two sides may meet with Zinni today. But Sharon has received repeated pleas from the Bush administration to allow Arafat to travel to Beirut, where Arab leaders are to consider a Saudi initiative that offers peace and the prospect of normal relations with Israel if it withdraws from land conquered in the 1967 war.

Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke with Sharon twice over the weekend, and Monday the White House added its own pressure.

"We do think it would be constructive for Chairman Arafat to attend the Arab summit," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "And the reason for that is the president thinks that the summit should devote its energies to focusing on how to bring peace to the region and not discuss who is or who is not in attendance."

Not possible to ignore U.S. opinion

Although Sharon has been loath to ease Arafat's confinement, some members of his coalition favor it, notably Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. But it is the U.S. pressure that has been felt most acutely.

"It's not possible to ignore the American pressure," Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin, of Sharon's hard-line Likud Party, was quoted on the Web site of Israel's largest newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth.

Nonetheless, the decision presents a dilemma for Sharon, who has called Arafat Israel's "bitter enemy."

If Israel bars him from traveling, it would defy its closest ally, the United States, and risk inflaming the Arab world. If Israel permits Arafat to go, it increases the likelihood Arab leaders will embrace a peace formula -- full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem -- that Sharon and many Israelis find unacceptable.

Israeli officials said that, if Arafat does attend the summit, the decision on permitting him to return would depend on his "good behavior." Specifically, they are warning that he might be prevented from returning to Palestinian territory if he uses the meeting as a platform for "incitement." The Bush administration has insisted that if Arafat goes, he be allowed a "round trip" to Beirut, according to Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman.

If Israel does permit Arafat to go, it would leave the Bush administration in the situation of explaining why Arafat's recent performance has been enough to win authorization to travel to Beirut but insufficient to earn a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney.

While in Jerusalem last week, Cheney offered to return to the Middle East to meet Arafat if he took steps to restrain attacks on Israelis. Cheney, speaking at a news conference with Sharon, set the same conditions that Sharon laid out for allowing Arafat to travel.

Monday evening, the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, said Arab leaders would likely approve "a very clear statement as far as peace is concerned," but also cautioned that the region is poised between extremes -- "either justice, peace and progress, or total chaos and escalating confrontations with consequences nobody can predict."

Scarred city

As a reminder of both, the leaders could not have picked a better venue than Beirut, a seaside city that has many renovated hotels and upscale restaurants but remains scarred with the remains of buildings devastated during Lebanon's 15-year civil war. The leaders will be staying at the plush Phoenicia hotel, which sits near a former Holiday Inn whose gutted, bullet-riddled shell has been hidden from the sight of Arab kings and presidents by a building-size drapery emblazoned with the French "Vive le Liban" -- Long Live Lebanon.

Whether the summit will have any appreciable effect on easing violence remains doubtful. Israeli officials have focused not on the Saudi-sponsored initiative, but on their own cease-fire discussions with the Palestinians. If those talks end without agreement, Israeli officials say, they may make their most forceful military incursion yet into Palestinian-controlled territory.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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