Besieged Arafat faces battle for survival

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, again a prisoner in his West Bank headquarters yesterday, faces a battle for political survival after renewed violence that further undermined his authority.

The two suicide bombings carried out this week by militant groups defied his calls for such attacks to cease.

Arafat looks powerless to rein in the Palestinian militants but also says he cannot carry out reforms demanded by Washington and Israel because of the army siege and widespread Israeli blockades of Palestinian areas.

Israel says it wants to isolate Arafat, who has been sidelined by the United States and faces growing problems at home after his government was forced to resign this month to avoid losing a confidence vote in parliament.

Although he is still favourite to win a presidential election on January 20, Arafat is under severe pressure at home and abroad two years after the start of Palestinian uprising that has failed to win his people an independent state.

"His position is shaky and I believe he is in a pretty difficult and complicated situation," Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Army radio.

Even so, Israelis and Palestinians do not write him off. "Arafat is not finished. He is a survivor," said Palestinian political analyst Mehdi Abdel-Hadi.

Arafat's aides say he hopes the catastrophic situation the Palestinians now face is a cloud that will disappear.

"He believes he will emerge strong from this crisis. These are very hard times for him," an official close to Arafat said.

Arafat, now 73, emerged from exile in Tunis as the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1994 to head a fledgling autonomous Palestinian zone in the West Bank and Gaza after the signing of the Oslo interim peace accords in 1993.

By 1997 he had gained full or partial control through the accords of about 40 per cent of the West Bank and the bulk of Gaza.

He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, slain in 1995 by a right-wing Jew opposed to his peace policies, and Shimon Peres, Israel's current foreign minister, for signing the 1993 accords.

But talks on a permanent peace treaty hit an impasse in 2000 over issues including the extent of Israeli withdrawal from occupied areas, the status of Jerusalem and refugees.

Within months the bloodiest wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence in decades erupted.

US President George W. Bush has all but barred Arafat being the head of any Palestinian state, a heavy blow to a man who came to embody the Palestinian cause as he roamed the world in a black-and-white headdress shaped in the map of Palestine.

He has not been invited to Washington since Bush, who has called for new Palestinian leaders "not compromised by terror", took office in January 2001. Few prominent international leaders now stop off to see him in Ramallah.

He is also under intense pressure from his own people and from his influential mainstream Fatah group to make reforms and end alleged corruption by some Palestinian Authority ministers.

"I think people are no longer willing to accept policies that are not convincing ...I think he has got the message," Palestinian lawmaker Ziad Abu Amr said earlier this month.