The Israeli security cabinet decided on September 11 to "remove" in principle Yasser Arafat. Several senior Israeli officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the assassination of Arafat was "definitely" an option. They later backed down from those remarks. The United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding that Israel neither harm nor expel the Palestinian Authority president, Yasser Arafat. The US veto flew in the face of the Security Council, which voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion. Eleven members gave their backing and three, Britain, Germany and Bulgaria, abstained.

The decision to exercise the veto sparked anger among the Palestinians and worldwide. The authority's chief peace negotiator said he hoped Israel would not take the American action as a "licence to kill" Mr Arafat. Syria, the only Arab nation on the Security Council, tabled the resolution after a statement from Israel's security cabinet that it intended to "remove" Mr Arafat. The Palestine National Authority (PNA) hailed the United Nations General Assembly resolution last Friday, which overwhelmingly demanded that Israel, the occupying power, not deport nor threaten the safety of elected Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

In defiance of the US veto, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution demanding that Israel halt threats to "remove" Yasser Arafat. Palestinian diplomats won unanimous support from the European Union and many African states after adding a condemnation of Palestinian suicide bombings to the resolution. The resolution, which was presented to an emergency session of the assembly after the United States vetoed a similar measure this week at the UN Security Council, was passed 133-4 with 15 abstentions.

The US said the wording of the resolution did not promote the "road map" to peace. The road map is an internationally devised peace plan, drawn up by the US, the UN, the EU and Russia -- with Israeli and Palestinian consultation -- that seeks a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That means setting up an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the two occupied territories, alongside Israel. The plan was published earlier this year with the backing of the US president, George Bush, who, despite showing little interest early in his term in the Middle East, declared himself committed to the road map's vision of two states side-by-side. He told a summit of Arab leaders in Egypt he wanted to see "a continuous territory that the Palestinians can call home".

The plan sets out to achieve this by 2005 in three stages. The first demands an immediate cessation of Palestinian violence, reform of Palestinian political institutions, the dismantling of Israeli settlement outposts built since March 2001 and a progressive Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in a series of confidence building measures. Next comes the creation of an independent Palestinian state and an international conference on the road map. The third and final stage will seek a permanent end to the conflict with an agreement on final borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements. Arab states will also agree peace deals with Israel.

Since the UN put forward a plan to partition the former British mandate of Palestine in 1947 into Arab and Jewish areas, there have been three regional wars and two Palestinian uprisings (intifadas) against Israeli occupation. Crudely put, the root of each has been the instability created by the territorial split: either an Arab wish to destroy the state of Israel or an Israeli wish to extend its boundaries into Arab populated areas. Egypt and Jordan made peace deals with Israel but the instability has persisted. Fears of a regional, or wider, conflagration over Israel have receded but only to be replaced by the view that the conflict is a spur to terrorism, or stirs up hatred towards Israel's mainly western backers. Others simply want to end what they see as the injustice suffered by the stateless Palestinians.

It is clearly found that during each war Israel has extended its boundaries. In 1948 it extended the Jewish areas in the partition plan to its present internationally recognised borders and, in 1967, took the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt -- what remained of British-administered Palestine. Significantly these were areas that large numbers of Palestinian refugees had fled or were forced to flee to when the Jewish state was created in 1948. So while the 1967 war had defended Israel against combined Arab armies massed on its borders, it had also put a significant Arab population under Israeli rule (in addition to its own Arab citizens). It was in the following years that Israel began an illegal programme of settlement building in the now occupied territories, which it successfully defended in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

The 1980s intifada, which came in a decade when Israel made peace with Egypt and pursued Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organisation into Lebanon, demonstrated a rage felt by Palestinians against Israeli occupation that resurfaced in September 2000 with the beginning of the still ongoing al-Aqsa intifada. But the conflict is not only territorial -- much of the economic life of the West Bank and Gaza has been suspended since September 2000, exacerbating unemployment and poverty as many Palestinians are prevented from going to their jobs in Israel.

International leaders who support Palestine also become victims. Sweden's Premier Goran Persson described assassinated Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh as "the face of Sweden" and said she was a voice for truth and justice; a voice against injustice, occupation, illegal settlements and the logic of power and hegemony. With the assassination of Anna Lindh, the Palestinian cause and the Arabs in general have lost one of the most important voices supporting their legitimate and just demands. A few years ago she was even imprisoned for two days during a visit to the Occupied Territories upon orders from then-Defence Minister Ariel Sharon. She saw in Israel's use of force against the Palestinians, and in America's tacit approval of this, a consecration of the law of the jungle and a subversion of the role of the UN and of international humanitarian law.

With Lindh's tragic departure the world has lost a wonderful and brave voice that dared say what great leaders and powers wouldn't. With her absence, those calling for a re-empowerment of international law and legitimacy have lost a herald who could have played a major role in the ongoing conflict between tyranny on the one hand and justice and law on the other. Anna Lindh carried with her the pain of the oppressed, the weak and defeated.

The murder of Arafat would represent the ultimate provocation, calculated to provoke a violent response that the Israeli regime would use as a justification for a full-scale assault on the Palestinian people. It is worthwhile considering the ideology that gives rise to the Jerusalem Post's stunning conclusion that the murder of an elected president is a means of demonstrating that "the tool of terror is unacceptable." This language reeks of fascism and exposes the extent to which the Israeli right has absorbed the outlook of the Nazis.

Arafat may not be the best, may be the Palestinians deserve better, but the choice is ultimately theirs to make. Yasser Arafat is a man who just a decade ago was invited to the White House to sign an ill-fated peace treaty and -- when it served the purposes of the major powers -- was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What is the purpose of publicly announcing plans for assassinating such a person?

The Israeli government claims that the murder of Arafat is necessary because the 74-year-old Palestinian president is an intolerable "obstacle to the process of reconciliation and peace." This from a regime that has engaged in ceaseless provocations, from the assassination of leading Palestinians to such collective punishments as the demolition of housing and the lockdown of entire towns, as well as the bombing of crowded residential neighbourhoods and the uninterrupted seizure of Palestinian land!

The Israeli government decision to "remove" Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom it considers an "obstacle" to peace-making, mainly reflects Israeli perplexity and frustration. The Israeli government and public opinion are angry, fearful and confused because all their military force and political pressure on the Palestinians have not been able to stop the resistance against the Israeli occupation. Yet this latest threat, like all that Israel has done to the Palestinians in the past 36 years of occupation, will not succeed either, because it is an expression of rage rather than rationality. It has also been attempted before, without success. Israel and the US need to understand the reality and must be rational in their steps for desired peace plan in Palestine as well as in the Middle East.

Mir Lutful Kabir Saadi is Bureau Chief, IMPACT International, UK and Fellow, 21st Century Trust, UK.