Ariel Sharon says Israel has no plans to kill Arafat.

“I don’t see any plans to kill him although the man is responsible for deaths of hundreds, of thousands of mostly civilians because his strategy is a strategy of terror,” Sharon told a group of European parliamentarians visiting Jerusalem.

Reuters, of course, tries to be “fair” by implying that Arafat is not a mass-murdering terrorist and repeating Palestinian claims verbatim. The bias is like a sock in the eye:

Israel accuses Arafat of fomenting violence in a three-year-old uprising for independence. Arafat denies the allegation and accuses Sharon of waging of a war to annihilate the Palestinian people.

I guess the Reuters Scare Quote Generator is on the fritz; otherwise I’m sure they would have put quotes around the words “annihilate the Palestinian people.”