Israel is backing away from comments made by the vice-president minister, who suggested that killing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was an option.
Israeli Vice-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sparked rage among Palestinians and drew criticism from the United States and the United Nations after suggesting Sunday that Arafat might be killed.
"Arafat can no longer be a factor in what happens here," Ehud Olmert told Israel Radio. "Expulsion is certainly one of the options, killing is also one of the options".  However on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom tried to distance the government from the statements.

"It (killing Arafat) is not the official policy of the Israeli government. It was never before, and we don't speak about any killing, we didn't speak about it before, and we don't speak about it today," Shalom told reporters Monday.
Last week, the Israeli Security Cabinet decided in principle to remove Arafat, calling him an obstacle to peace. But they said they are only in the planning stage.
Israel blames Arafat, at least indirectly, for attacks on Israeli civilians and accuses him of doing nothing with security forces under his control to crack down on Islamic militant groups.
Responding to Olmert's comments, Palestinian minister Saeb Erakat told CNN Radio that the Israeli government was behaving "like gangsters."
"Nation-states should not act in the way of blackmail, extortion, assassinations ... nation-states must adhere to the rule of law," he said. "I believe [what] the Israeli government is doing now is not the action of nations anymore, it's like gangsters."
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said exiling or killing Arafat would incite rage among Arabs and Muslims everywhere.
"The Israelis know our position quite well," Powell told Fox News Sunday during a visit to Iraq. "The United States does not support either the elimination of him or the exile of Mr. Arafat."

Fears of more violence

Amid threats of exile and death, Palestinians are rallying around Arafat's compound in a show of support for the confined leader.
Raghida Dergham, a senior diplomatic correspondent for Al-Hayat, said Palestinians aren't protesting the exile or death plans for Arafat because they love the leader.

"It is not only because they woke up one morning and they decided to love Arafat," she told CTV's Canada AM. "It is because they have been truthfully humiliated by the Israelis, not only humiliating their own president but also as far as daily killings.
"It's a cheap life for them and the Israelis have provoked the Palestinians beyond tolerance."
If that is true, it could spell the end of the Mideast "road map" to peace. The three-year multi-stage plan aims to end three years of violence and create a Palestinian state by 2005.

UN Mideast envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told the Security Council at the start of a debate on the troubled region that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had broken down. However, he said: "it is alarmist to speak of the demise of the peace process."
Roed-Larsen also stressed that Arafat was a democratically-elected Palestinian leader who "embodies Palestinian identity and national aspirations. He is now far from irrelevant."

Meanwhile, the killing continues. Israeli troops shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian teenager after he and others broke into an unused airfield straddling the line between Jerusalem and the West Bank, the boy's family said. Israeli soldiers also shot and wounded several youth who were throwing stones at soldiers near the settlement Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip.

With a report from The Associated Press

Canada AM: Raghida Dergham, Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, Al-Hayat