Palestinians turn fire on Arafat aide after arrests

Yasser Arafat cut short a visit to the Gulf yesterday and sped back to the Gaza Strip to try to head off the outbreak of a serious internal conflict after gunmen surrounded the house of the head of Palestinian military intelligence - his cousin - and blasted it with gunfire.

The show-down came after the Palestinian Authority, reacting to intense pressure from Israel and the US, arrested five members of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of activists that has been prominent in the 10-month intifada.

As Mr Arafat contemplated the perilous fissures within the Palestinian population of the occupied territories - having flown home early from the United Arab Emirates, cancelling a visit to Jordan - Israeli security officials were piecing together the final hours of 18-year-old Israeli settler, Yuri Gushtzin.

The youth's shot, repeatedly stabbed and mutilated body was discovered on the West Bank yesterday in what appeared to be the latest brutal sectarian killing to blight the Middle East conflict. His remains were transferred to the Israeli authorities, which were last night working to establish why he was killed and by whom, amid strong suspicions of political motive.

If proved, then there will be even stronger pressure from Israel on Yasser Arafat and his coterie to round up and jail militant elements. Mr Gushtzin lived in the settlement of Pisgat Ze'ev in the northern suburbs of Jerusalem. Police believe he was killed in the Palestinian town of Ramallah, and his body later dumped in the nearby West Bank under control of the Israeli military.

Since the start of the intifada, Ramallah has been the scene of several horrific killings of Israelis, including two reserve soldiers were lynched by a mob and a 16-year-old boy, who was shot dead in a car after being lured into the occupied territories by a Palestinian woman whom he got to know on the internet. In April, a 37-year-old Israeli was also killed there in what seem to be similar circumstances to yesterday's killing. Witnesses in the Gaza Strip said that late on Monday an angry crowd surrounded the home of Moussa Arafat, the intelligence chief, and pounded it with rocks after news of the arrests circulated through the teeming, blockaded strip.

Some 20 gunmen - including militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the mainstream Fatah - blasted the building with guns. The security guards fired back, but aimed over their heads.

A Palestinian official denied the Palestinian Authority was making political arrests, but confirmed some activists had been detained on "grounds of discipline". It is not the first eruption of violence between the Palestinian authorities - which before the intifada were reviled as hugely inept, compromising and corrupt by many Palestinians on the street - and radicals committed to continue what they see as a national war against Israeli occupation. The Palestinian leadership has repeatedly argued that this important reason is why they cannot fulfil Israel's demand - which is underscored by the never-implemented Tenet ceasefire and Mitchell report - to jail militants.

Israel has submitted a list of activists that it wants behind bars. The latter are becoming more outspoken in their criticism of Mr Arafat and his coterie.

"The Palestinian Authority should stop political arrests. It should liaise with the resistance against the (Israeli) occupation and not confiscate rifles," a senior leader of the group told journalists. Security has been heightened in Israel in recent days, partly because Monday was the closing ceremony of the Maccabiah Games - the so-called Jewish Olympics - but also because of the risk of reprisals after a group of armed Jewish settlers shot dead two young Arab men and a three-month-old baby outside their village close to Hebron.

That attack has prompted the Palestinian leadership to emulate Israel, and issue a list of more than 50 names of Jewish militant settlers whom it demands that Israel should now arrest for attacking Arabs.