Killing Arafat an option, says Israeli vice premier

ISRAEL'S vice prime minister said killing Yasser Arafat is an option for Israel, as Palestinians yesterday took to the streets across the West Bank and Gaza Strip promising to protect their leader.

Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert echoed threats by other Israeli officials who suggested last week's decision to "remove" Mr Arafat means he might be sent into exile, further isolated at his West Bank compound or dealt with more harshly.

But Mr Olmert, considered a likely future candidate for premier, is the closest official to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to say outright he might be killed.

"Arafat can no longer be a factor in what happens here," he told Israel Radio. "Expulsion is certainly one option, killing is also one."

The statement underscored the collapse of recent US-backed peace efforts and the depths to which Israeli-Palestinian relations have sunk a decade after Mr Arafat and then-premier Yitzhak Rabin agreed on the first Israel-PLO deals in September 1993 amid hopes the long-standing conflict might be resolved.

But SU Secretary of State Colin Powell said Israel would incite rage among Muslims everywhere by exiling or killing Mr Arafat. "The Israelis know our position well," Mr Powell told Fox News . "The US does not support either the elimination of him or the exile of Mr Arafat," he said.

Meanwhile, Israeli security officials, said Mr Sharon has decided not to build, for now, a section of Israel's security barrier that would have cut deep into the West Bank to incorporate Jewish settlements in the centre of territory that Palestinians want for a state.

The previously intended route of the barrier had enraged Palestinians, who saw it as a land grab, and drew stiff opposition from the US.

The plan to erect a security barrier between Israel and the West Bank is popular in Israel as a way to block suicide bombers. No Palestinian bombers have come from the Gaza Strip, which is fenced.

Israel has completed about 90 miles of the West Bank barrier, whose fences, trenches, razor wire and concrete walls could eventually run more than 400 miles, depending on the ultimate route.

On Saturday, Mr Arafat urged Israel to return to the negotiating table to end three years of violence in which more than 800 Israelis and some 2,500 Palestinians have been killed. Israeli leaders say Mr Arafat is responsible at least indirectly for terror attacks, and they seek alternative Palestinian leaders.

Hundreds of Mr Arafat's supporters streamed into his devastated West Bank compound yesterday for a fourth straight day, chanting that their 74-year-old leader "is a mountain that the wind can't shake".

A crowd of thousands, including children, marched through the West Bank city of Nablus. At the Israeli cabinet meeting, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz issued a list of demands to any new Palestinian government.

Mr Mofaz was quoted as saying Israel will not co-operate with any government that carries out Mr Arafat's orders or that strengthens his standing, and that any Palestinian government must act against militant groups.

A two-month ceasefire declared by militant groups collapsed last month following a suicide bombing that killed 23 people on a Jerusalem bus, prompting Israeli strikes against leaders of the militant group Hamas, which claimed responsibility.

Palestinian legislator Saeb Erekat condemned Mr Olmert's statements as "the behaviour and actions of a mafia and not a government".