Israel Weighs Response to Raid on Settlement
Israel's army chief sparked bitter debate at a security cabinet meeting Wednesday with a renewed proposal to exile Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after a gunman killed three youths in a Jewish settlement.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has made no secret of his wish to sideline Arafat but has heeded Washington's warnings against ousting him, upbraided Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz for overstepping his bounds, political sources said.

But the dispute in the cabinet room, where ministers also debated whether to reoccupy Palestinian-ruled areas, was a sign of pressure on Sharon to strike back for the latest attacks.

Sharon consulted his ministers after a gunman sneaked into the Itamar settlement in West Bank Tuesday night and fired on boys playing basketball at an Orthodox Jewish boarding school.

``We want your military opinions, don't try to navigate the government,'' the right-wing prime minister was quoted as telling Mofaz after the general raised the option of exiling Arafat.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, head of the dove-ish Labor Party, Sharon's coalition partner, decried Mofaz's idea, though at least one member of Sharon's Likud party supported it.

Mofaz, who steps down in June and is believed to be eyeing a political career, created a political firestorm in early April when he said generals favored expelling Arafat. At the time Arafat was trapped in his headquarters by Israeli tanks.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel's Army Radio the security cabinet meeting had agreed to intensify work on building physical barriers between Israel and the West Bank.

``The consensus is that the creation of a buffer zone must be stepped up, a fence should be put up at the most sensitive points between us and Judea and Samaria (West Bank),'' he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html