PLO says Arafat plans to return to Jericho in May
PLO says Arafat plans to return to Jericho in May
TUNIS (Reuter): PLO leader Yasser Arafat plans to return to Jericho in May if Israel-PLO negotiations on Palestinian self- rule in the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area are concluded on schedule, senior PLO officials said yesterday.
"Abu Ammar (Arafat) told us he is preparing to return to the homeland soon. He said it would be next month...and (he) will go to Jericho," Samir Subeihat, president of the General Union of Palestinian Students, told Reuters.
Subeihat spoke before joining a group of Palestinian deportees allowed to return to the occupied territories under a deal on implementing the self-rule accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Arafat announced his plan to the group during a farewell meeting on Sunday night at the PLO's headquarters in Tunis, Subeihat said.
A senior PLO official who attended the meeting also told Reuters Arafat plans to go to Jericho in five to seven weeks.
The PLO and Israel are finalizing in Cairo a deal for the implementation of their self-rule agreement signed last September in Washington which provides for the withdrawal by April 13 of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area, and for a Palestinian self-rule authority.
Arafat was named last year chairman of the Palestinian authority.
A group of 46 civil deportees and a first contingent of Palestinian police are expected to return home this week as vanguards for such authority.
The returnees are expected to exercise strong influence in the areas they originally came from and to help fill a power vacuum the PLO has suffered in Israeli-occupied territories in recent months.
The list of 46 returnees obtained by Reuters includes most of the grassroots leaders deported by Israeli authorities for their alleged role in the Palestinian intifada or uprising against Israeli rule which erupted in 1987.
About 16 of the men were deported during the 1970s.
Occupied lands
Contrary to expectations, the list does not include Arafat's top advisers on the occupied lands -- Akram Henieh, Jibril al- Rojoub, both from the West Bank, and Mohamed Dahlan, from the Gaza Strip.
"They (the returnees) are expected to cross the borders on Tuesday from Jordan for those returning to the West Bank and from Egypt for those returning to the Gaza Strip," Rojoub told Reuters.
Meanwhile, two PLO generals joined talks with Israel on the deployment of Palestinian police in Israeli-occupied territories yesterday and Israeli troops prepared to leave as the peace process moved up a gear.
Two Palestinian generals, Nar Yousserf and Abderazzak al-Yahya took part in the Cairo meetings yesterday to discuss a timetable for deployment and the laws that will apply.
Reporters in Jericho saw Israeli troops hauling away equipment from police and army headquarters. Soldiers in Gaza were moving 600 prisoners whose fate is still in dispute from a prison that will fall under Palestinian control to a camp in Israel itself, security sources said.
The deployment, expected to start within a week, will be one of the most significant changes on the ground in the occupied territories since Israel and the PLO signed an historic agreement on Palestinian self-rule in Washington last September.
But Gen. Nasr Youssef, the commander of Palestinian security forces, said there was no agreement yet on the size of the police force or on when they would go.