Palestinians are burying their differences with their embattled president, Yasser Arafat, pledging to stand by him after Israel declared him an enemy.

Since Israeli tanks pushed to Arafat's West Bank doorstep in Ramallah, leaders of secular and Islamist groups long opposed to his peace moves with Israel have rallied behind the man seen by most Palestinians as the symbol of their independence struggle.

"When the president stands up to Israeli occupation, unmoved by the threat to his life, he becomes a symbol of resistance and sacrifice," Ismail Abu Shanab, a leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, told Reuters on Sunday.

Arafat parted company with many of his radical colleagues in the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993 when he signed an interim peace deal with Israel.

He came under fire from many Palestinian hardliners when, under US and Israeli pressure, he ordered repeated crackdowns on Islamic and secular activists opposed to his peace strategy.

Other Palestinians have criticised him for an autocratic style and intolerance of dissent which has kept power concentrated in his hands. Some fault him for condoning corruption and a lack of transparency in the nascent institutions of the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian human rights groups have protested at Arafat's curbs on the media and at torture and other abuses they say have been committed by the many security outfits that answer to him. But Rabah Muhanna, a senior official in the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said Arafat's defiance in the face of Israeli tanks besieging his office had restored his battered standing among many Palestinians.

"We appreciate Arafat's steadfastness and we regard ourselves soldiers under his command for the sake of Jerusalem and Palestine," said Muhanna, a harsh critic of Arafat's 1993 Oslo interim peace accord with Israel.

On Friday Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared Arafat an "enemy" and sent tanks to his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah after a suicide bomber killed 22 Israelis in the coastal resort of Netanya.

Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers smashed their way into the presidential compound and cut off water and electricity supplies and telephone lines. Troops have been clashing with his bodyguards, raising fears for the Palestinian leader's life.

Israel has pledged not to harm Arafat, but Palestinians say the tight siege and intermittent gunfire close to the presidential office puts Arafat's life in danger.

Arafat, who boasts that he has survived several Israeli attempts on his life over the past 35 years, galvanised Palestinian opinion behind him by declaring that he prefers "to die a martyr" rather than surrender to Israeli forces.

"They want me either killed or captured or expelled. I say they can only take me as a martyr, a martyr, a martyr," Arafat said on Friday.

Opinion polls conducted in Palestinian territories during the last year put Arafat's approval rating at around 55 percent, but political analyst Naji Shurrab said his popularity would have rocketed in the last three days.

"Absolutely 100 percent of the people are with him. He is Palestine under siege now," Shurrab told Reuters.

Shurrab said the Israeli assault was aimed not only at Arafat's person but at 35 years of the Palestinian independence struggle.

"Israel is wrong if it imagines it can end the resistance by killing or expelling Arafat. These days, Arafat is an icon for all freedom fighters, not only in Palestine but everywhere."