Arafat brushes off Israeli threats

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today brushed off new Israeli threats against him, saying Israel can never get rid of him.

Arafat spoke to several thousand supporters outside his West Bank headquarters after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he was no longer bound by an earlier promise to Washington not to harm the Palestinian leader.

Sharon’s remarks, in an interview shown yesterday on Israel’s Channel Two TV, were seen as his strongest threat against Arafat yet.

Speaking in poetic Arabic, Arafat referred to himself as a ”mountain”.

“I tell Sharon and his gang, ’Oh mountain, the wind will never move you,”’ he said.