JERUSALEM — In advance of a White House visit, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged Palestinians today to overthrow their leadership, calling it a "despotic regime that is leading you from failure to failure."
"Your terrible suffering is needless," Sharon said in a speech that inaugurated the winter session of Israel's parliament.
Sharon alleged that "murderous terror gangs" have taken over the Palestinian territories with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's encouragement and consent.
"Change the despotic regime that is leading you from failure to failure, from tragedy to tragedy," he said.
The Israeli leader has spoken in favour of exiling Arafat and has sent Israeli troops to the doorstep of Arafat's offices three times this year.
But Sharon has stopped short of kicking out the Palestinian leader, with the United States and the Israeli security services both arguing against such a move.
The Israeli military actions have given Arafat's popularity at least a short-term boost, as Palestinians have rallied around him.
The Palestinians have tentatively scheduled general elections in January — but Israel's occupation of West Bank cities has raised questions about whether the balloting can take place.
Palestinians deeply distrust Sharon, whom they consider a war criminal, and officials were sharply critical of his latest call to oust Arafat.
"This is arrogant and shameless," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said of Sharon's speech.
"As far as the Palestinian people are concerned, they don't need to listen to Sharon's advice — they need to save themselves from Sharon's bullets and bombs."
Sharon, making his seventh White House visit in 18 months, was leaving Israel late Monday and meets with President George W. Bush on Wednesday.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, sent a strongly worded letter to Sharon calling on him to take steps to lessen the hardships imposed on the occupied territories, a diplomatic source said.
They include withdrawing troops from at least one of the six West Bank cities occupied by Israeli forces, easing restrictions on the movements of Palestinians and handing over hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenues that Israel has withheld since the latest Palestinian uprising began two years ago.
However, a western diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sharon was not expected to face pressure for a more far-reaching diplomatic initiative when he gets to Washington.
Instead, talks with Bush were expected to focus on the prospects of U.S. war with Iraq and Washington's desire that Israel stay on the sidelines, as it did when Bush's father went to war with Iraq more than a decade ago.
On Monday, Palestinians buried a militant killed by a booby-trapped public telephone in Bethlehem.
Palestinians blamed Israel for the death Sunday of Mohammed Abayat and accused Sharon's government of attempting to incite violence in a town that's been calm since Israel's army withdrew two months ago. The pullout was billed as a test of the Palestinian security forces' ability to prevent attacks against Israel.
"Bethlehem has been a very quiet town," said Bethlehem Gov. Mohammed Madni. "I think this act of killing . . . may escalate the situation. But the Palestinian Authority will exert all its best efforts to calm down the situation."
Palestinians contend that Israel needs the constant bloodshed to justify its hold on Palestinian land and that it carries out assassinations and armed incursions in an effort to keep the pot boiling.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the latest attack.
Raanan Gissin, an Israeli government spokesman, described Abayat as someone who "belongs to a family of criminals."
"Terrorism is the family business," he said.
Palestinians acknowledged Abayat was a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is linked to Arafat's Fatah movement, but said he did not hold any ranking position and was not an important figure.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz speculated the security forces may have been attempting to kill one of Abayat's cousins, Nasser Abayat, a local Al Aqsa leader in Bethlehem.
A few hundred people, mostly family and clan members, attended Abayat's low-key funeral.
In the West Bank after nightfall Monday, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinians, Palestinian security officials said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said both were members of the militant Islamic Jihad.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Israel was considering returning all of previously autonomous areas of the southern West Bank to Palestinian control.
Peres said the towns in the region, including Bethlehem, Jericho and Hebron, have been relatively quiet for several weeks. Bethlehem and Jericho are already under Palestinian control, while Israeli troops remain in Hebron and other parts of the southern West Bank.
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