THE Israeli army may have reduced his daily world to four rooms surrounded by spectacular hills of rubble, but Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was not pulling any punches last week.

He accused Osama Bin Laden of being an opportunist who has cynically exploited the Palestinian cause to woo support in the Islamic world.

Arafat was angry and uncharacteristically direct. “Why is Bin Laden talking about Palestine now?” he said, his eyes bulging behind huge spectacles that dwarfed his pale face.

“Bin Laden never — not ever — stressed this issue. He never helped us. He was working in another, completely different area and against our interests.”

Arafat delivered his first attack on Bin Laden in an interview two days after a spokesman for the Al-Qaeda founder claimed that his priority was an independent Palestinian state.

“Liberation of our holy places, led by Palestine, is our central issue,” said Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the spokesman, in a tape-recorded statement that admitted responsibility for the simultaneous attacks on an Israeli jet and hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, on November 28. An attempt to shoot down the plane failed, but 15 people died in the car bombing of the Paradise hotel.

Arafat dismissed Al-Qaeda’s intervention. “I am the first leader (in the Arab world) to stand up to Bin Laden,” he said. “I’m telling him directly not to hide behind the Palestinian cause.” The difference between the men is stark: while Arafat would love an invitation to the White House, Bin Laden probably dreams of destroying it.

Arafat was particularly enraged by a website established in the name of the previously unknown Islamic Al-Qaeda Organisation in Palestine, which claims that it “joins its voice with the voices of the mujaheddin in Palestine . . . and will accept nothing but the full liberation of the Palestine land”.

Arafat’s anger continued into a denunciation of a claim by Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, that Al-Qaeda cells were operating in Gaza and planned to attack Israeli targets.

Sharon was trying to hitch his wagon to the American “war on terror”, Arafat said, insisting the Palestinians were engaged in a purely nationalist struggle for an end to Israeli occupation.

“Big, big lies,” Arafat said of the Israeli prime minister’s charge. “Sharon wants to cover his military attacks against the Palestinian people with a new face. He knows that there are no relations between Al-Qaeda and Palestine.”

Arafat’s strongest denunciation yet of Bin Laden reflected his deep concern that the war on terror will encourage the Bush administration to accept Israeli claims that Palestinian operations are part of global terrorism.

Arafat has history on his side. Bin Laden came late to his espousal of the Palestinian cause: the Saudi Arabian dissident founded Al-Qaeda to oppose American troops on Saudi soil, what he calls the “land of the two sacred shrines”, Medina and Mecca. He denounced the Saudi regime and wants the royal family to be replaced by a sharia, or Islamic, government.

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