HIGHLIGHTS:Arafat Rejects Cabinet Offer to Resign|| Abdel al-Sattar Qassem Would Challenge Arafat If Presidential Elections Were to Be Called||Peres Re-issues Peace Plan||STORY: President Yasser Arafat summoned the Palestinian election committee for a meeting on Sunday after raising doubts about a vote he promised and rejecting his cabinet's offer to resign to help push reforms.

"All the ministers offered to quit but Arafat rejected their resignations," cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters.

He said the offer was made last week at a cabinet meeting "in the framework of reforms and changes that Arafat spoke about in the Legislative Council (on Wednesday)."

In the wake of a recent six-week Israeli military offensive, Arafat has also come under internal pressure to hold new elections and stamp out corruption in his government, which runs parts of the West Bank and Gaza under interim peace deals.

In his speech to the Palestinian legislature, Arafat called for "a review of all our administrative, ministerial and security forces" and also proposed the "speedy preparation of elections," without giving a date.

But he told reporters on Friday elections must await the end of Israeli military occupation. Aides said he was referring to an Israeli pullback to positions held in the West Bank and Gaza before a Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000.

However, Arafat's condition could delay reforms since militant factions have vowed no let-up to the uprising until the army vacates the territories entirely, while Israel vows no retreat to 2000 lines until violence has demonstrably ceased.

Mohammed Shtaeh, secretary-general of the Palestinian election committee, said it would meet Arafat at his request.

Palestinians last held an election in January 1996.

ARAFAT CHALLENGER

A Western-educated Palestinian political science professor who was jailed several times by the Palestinian Authority after accusing it of corruption announced he would challenge Arafat for the presidency if elections were called.

Abdel al-Sattar Qassem, 53, teaches at A-Najah University, a stronghold of the militant Hamas group in the West Bank city of Nablus, and has been critical of the interim peace deals Arafat reached with Israel.

Asked whether he supported Palestinian bomb attacks against Israelis, he said: "The Palestinian people have the right to use various means to regain their rights."

INTIFADHA CONFRONTATIONS CONTINUE

Confrontations in a Palestinian uprising (Intifadha) against occupation in much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip continued on Saturday.
Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian doctor driving past the village of Beit Omar, near the city of Hebron, Palestinian sources said. Military sources said occupation soldiers fired at a car that ran through a checkpoint.

On Friday, a Palestinian Resistance man entered a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and wounded a guard before being shot dead. The Israeli occupation army said it also raided Jenin's refugee camp and seized 24 militants involved in "terrorist" attacks on Israelis. (Photo caption)

TENSION ON ISRAELI-LEBANESE BORDER

In Lebanon, the Hizbollah Resistance movement said its gunners fired anti-aircraft rounds at Israeli warplanes flying over south Lebanon. Israeli military officials said Hizbollah fighters fired across the border at an Israeli military helicopter but missed.

PERES-QUREI PEACE PLAN

Israel's dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres -- largely sidelined within the government and the Labour Party he once led -- re-issued on Saturday a peace plan he formulated with Ahmed Korei, speaker of the Palestinian parliament.

It calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in 40 percent of the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, followed by a year of talks on some of the toughest issues facing the two sides: final borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements and security
arrangements.

A final-status agreement would then be implemented over a year, underwritten -- in a new twist to the proposal -- by the so-called "quartet," the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

Another new element in the plan makes establishment of a Palestinian state conditional on the unification of Palestinian security forces, a move which the proposal said would hasten a cease-fire in more than 19 months of violence.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians run out from their house which demolished by Israeli occupationsoldiers in the West Bank city of Jenin, May 17, 2002. President Yasser Arafat will convene a rare meeting of the Palestinian election committee on May 19 after he raised doubts about a vote he promised under popular pressure. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)