Palestinian Urges Defiance; Plan to Grab Arafat Reported
Marwan Barghouti, a rising Palestinian leader on trial in Israel on charges of terrorism, today called on Palestinians throughout the West Bank to defy Israeli curfews, and an Israeli newspaper reported that the army has rehearsed an operation to snatch and deport Yasir Arafat.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has repeatedly sought to exile Mr. Arafat, whom he considers Israel's enemy, but most of Israel's top security officials have opposed the move and the coalition government has blocked it.

Mr. Barghouti, the top West Bank official of Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction, appeared today for a third hearing in advance of his trial on charges of planning attacks that left 26 Israelis dead and scores wounded. Mr. Barghouti has denied the charges and rejected Israel's authority to try him.

The trial is shaping up as a showdown between Israeli officials out to demonstrate links between mainstream Palestinian leaders and terrorism, and one of the most articulate of those leaders, who is trying to put the Israeli occupation itself in the dock. Mr. Barghouti's lawyers distributed his own 54-count indictment of Israel today.

Today's hearing, to evaluate a prosecution request to extend Mr. Barghouti's confinement, was once again marked by tumult inside and outside the Tel Aviv courtroom. Families of some Israeli victims scuffled outside with the police.

As Mr. Barghouti was brought in shackles into the courtroom, he called out, "I say one thing: The intifada will be victorious over the occupation." He clasped his chained hands over his head and shook them, smiling at supporters.

He was drowned out by bereaved Israelis screaming, "They shouldn't give you the right to speak!" and "They should castrate you!"

One of Mr. Barghouti's lawyers, Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli, compared him to Moses. Speaking of Moses, he said, "According to some lawyers, he should be called a terrorist, but according to Exodus, he is a freedom fighter." Mr. Leibowitz argued that Moses killed an Egyptian not because he hated Egyptians but because the man was beating a fellow Jew.

Mr. Barghouti smiled, but Yaakov Shemesh, who lost his brother and pregnant sister-in-law in a bombing in Jerusalem earlier this year, shouted at the lawyer, "How dare you call yourself a Jew?"

At one point in today's proceedings, Mr. Barghouti said, "This isn't a court — this is a carnival." Access by the news media to the courtroom was restricted to a pool of reporters.

Mr. Barghouti calls himself a political leader, not a military one. He has said he supports attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territory Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, but not against civilians inside pre-1967 Israeli borders.

In a statement, Mr. Barghouti said, "What is on trial today is the conscience of all freedom-loving people around the world." He said that his crime was not terrorism but "that I insist on my freedom, freedom for my children, freedom for the entire Palestinian people. And if indeed that is a crime, I'd probably plead guilty."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/04/international/middleeast/04MIDE.html