GAZA: YASSER ARAFAT FIGHTS TO SAVE PEACE PROCESS WITH ISRAEL

(7 Mar 1996) Natural Sound
As Yasser Arafat fights to save the peace process with Israel, the Palestinian legislature born of the peacemaking headed to Gaza to convene for the first time.
Thursday's meeting sets the clock ticking for changes in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation charter that call for Israel's destruction.
Under the terms of Israel-PLO peace agreement signed last fall, the council has two months to make the amendment.
A blustery morning for a new beginning for the Palestinian council.
Newly elected members of the Palestinian legislature are arriving for their inaugural meeting.
Strict Israeli security measures meant council members from the West Bank had to be specially escorted to the meeting by Israeli military vehicles.
P-L-O Chairman, Yasser Arafat arrived under great pomp and ceremony at Thursday's meeting.
He has agreed to help Shimon Peres arrest the militant Muslims of Hamas who could have been involved in the four recent attacks in Israel.
The Palestinian Authority, as a whole, has taken pains to prove that it was complying with Israel's demand for a war on Hamas.
Arafat's forces raided the Gaza Strip's Islamic University, a Hamas hotbed, on Wednesday.
The night before, they joined in an arrest sweep with Israel for the first time, seizing relatives of a suspected suicide bomber.
Thursday's meeting in Gaza is meant to set a two-month clock ticking on a promised revocation of clauses in the P-L-O charter that call for Israel's destruction.
Until that happens, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres warned, the peace process is on hold, and Israel will not pull out of Hebron, the last West Bank town under its control.
Although amendment of the charter is tied to the council's inauguration, it is not the council that must amend it.
Under the terms of the Israeli-P-L-O accords it is another body, the Palestinian National Council, that must re-write the charter.
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