Jerrold Kessel: Israelis ease little on Arafat

CNN's Jerrold Kessel

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israel has agreed to allow Yasser Arafat to leave his compound in Ramallah but kept in place restrictions preventing the Palestinian leader from moving outside the West Bank city.

The Palestinians have criticized the decision and canceled a security meeting with the Israelis aimed at trying to reduce conflict in the region.

CNN Correspondent Jerrold Kessel is monitoring the situation from Jerusalem.

KESSEL: I think when you say "easing restrictions," it has to be added, easing him of very little because those Israeli tanks, which have been ringing Mr. Arafat's headquarters in [the West Bank city of] Ramallah, are likely to be redeployed but not a very long way off.

MORE STORIES Arafat allowed to leave compound

This [move comes] after a very intensive discussion in the Israeli security Cabinet [Sunday] morning at the end of which a decision was taken that they would ease the restrictions a little on Yasser Arafat -- to wit, that he can leave that compound in Ramallah, where he's been penned up for almost three months because of attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, but that he cannot leave Ramallah without expressed permission of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Mr. Sharon read out to his Cabinet [on Sunday] morning, the full government meeting, the decision taken of the security Cabinet that he -- that Israel -- expected Yasser Arafat to go further than the arrest last week of three Palestinian militants, who are believed to be involved in the [October] assassination of Israeli Cabinet minister [Rechavam Ze'evi].

It was the demand that those Palestinians be arrested -- that was the condition for Israel keeping Yasser Arafat penned up in Ramallah.

Mr. Sharon said bluntly that Israel will be watching closely to make sure that this arrest is genuine. And also, he said the arrest of those involved in that infamous Karine A, the boat smuggling affair, to the Palestinians.

So the Israelis are continuing to take rather a hard line with regard to Yasser Arafat's movements in the area, and the Palestinians are coming back very hard at that and describing this latest Israeli decision as mere humiliation.

So the Israeli tanks are likely to stay around Ramallah at the very least. The Palestinians had been hoping that a decision to relieve this travel ban on Mr. Arafat would fit into what had happened at the end of last week -- when the top security commanders of the two sides had met and had come to some kind of tentative understanding.

We can't put it more than that, not even an agreement, an understanding that the two sides would do their very best to limit hostilities during the next few days, a period of Jewish holidays and Muslim holidays at the same time.

But now the hopes that this would merge with something grander than that perhaps [has been put] into question by this latest Israeli decision on the reassertion of Israel's continued control and limitation of Yasser Arafat's travel movements.