Arafat's Ceasefire Call Merely "Tactical Decision:" SharonIsraeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday morning that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's call for a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians is merely "a tactical decision."Speaking before Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, Sharon said that the assessment was based on reports from the Israeli army intelligence agency. He claimed that Arafat announced a ceasefire only out of great fear of an immediate retaliation attack by Israel after the suicide bombing incident in Tel Aviv Friday night, which killed the suicide bomber and 19 Israelis, most of them teenage girls, and wounded more than 120. Sharon believed that Arafat's order was also a response to great pressure from the international community. Arafat issued the ceasefire order in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday, 10 days after Sharon made the same order. The Palestinians claimed that Sharon's ceasefire order was a public relations ploy. On Sunday, Palestinian National Authority-run television and radio repeatedly announced ceasefire steps the Palestinians would implement to end the eight months of violence with Israel, during which more than 570 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed. It was reported that 13 Palestinian political groups, including the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad (Holy War), are to meet later Sunday to discuss the ceasefire. The Palestinians also began their patrol at the points of friction with Israel in the past eight months to monitor the situation. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, who participated in a security cabinet meeting earlier Sunday morning along with Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, confirmed in the cabinet meeting that Arafat had issued orders to his local commanders. But he suspected whether the ceasefire could be held on the ground. The security cabinet meeting did not make any decisions despite great public pressure on the government to take retaliation attacks against Palestinian targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians had evacuated their office buildings in the territories in fear of such attacks. In May, Israel's F-16 fighter jets bombed Palestinian targets in the West Bank and Gaza, killing a dozen of people. Meanwhile, Israel Radio quoted Palestinian sources as saying that George Tenet, head of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will visit the region in the next few days to arrange a timetable for both sides to carry out a ceasefire. Tenet had participated in several mediation sessions between the two sides since they engaged in clashes. |
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