Fatah vows to stop attacks on Israelis

Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah party was putting the final touches last night to a three-page declaration committing it to preventing all attacks against Israeli civilians.

Despite conflicting statements by Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a well-placed European diplomat told The Independent that the declaration would be launched today amid a fanfare of publicity. "It will come together and all the signs are that it will enjoy overwhelming Palestinian support," he said.

Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior West Bank Fatah activist, said, though, that the leadership still had some reservations.

The declaration is due to be issued in the name not only of Fatah, but also of its Tanzim military wing. The Tanzim and its affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades have launched an increasing share of bombings and shootings over the past year, inside Israel as well as in the occupied territories.

An English-language draft leaked to the liberal Israeli daily Ha'aretz made no distinction between civilians in Israel proper and Jewish settlers. It did, however, pledge Fatah to "continue our resistance against the occupation with all legitimate means", which presumably include attacks on military targets.

For sceptical Israelis, the test is not so much what Fatah says as what it does. The leaked draft stated: "We, the Fatah movement, reject and we will prevent any attacks against Israeli civilians ... We are committed to following this political line and we will work to prevent all attacks on civilians."

Unlike previous Palestinian pronouncements, the declaration characterised such terrorist attacks as immoral, not just counter-productive.

To reassure Palestinians that the declaration was not a surrender to Israeli military might, the draft pledged "to continue our resistance until our people achieve their legal national right of return and self-determination".

The statement, titled "A Declaration to the Peaceful and Progressive People of Israel and the World", is pegged to the second anniversary of the current intifada, which broke out at the end of September 2000.

If it is published today, it will also coincide with the first anniversary of al-Qa'ida's assault on the World Trade Centre. Mr Arafat will be seen as trying to avoid being tarred with the same "terrorist" brush as Osama bin Laden.

Israel announced yesterday that its security forces at Ashdod port, north of Gaza, had seized containers packed with guns on their way to the Palestinian Authority.

A Hamas activist from the West Bank town of Jenin has been charged in a military court with planning to blow up a Tel Aviv skyscraper with a huge truck bomb and with recruiting two other militants to carry out a double suicide attack on the city's Tel- Hashomer hospital.

* A hawkish ex-general, Meir Dagan, will be the new head of Israel's Mossad spy agency. Mr Dagan, a counter-terrorism expert, has often doubted publicly whether Mr Arafat wants to make peace with Israel.

Mr Dagan served as anti-terrorism adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu during his time as Prime Minister.

His appointment by the current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, last November to head an Israeli peace negotiating team for talks with the American envoy General Anthony Zinni drew criticism from dovish Israeli politicians.