Arab leaders begin a two-day emergency summit in Cairo Saturday aimed at making Israel pay a diplomatic price for its deadly crackdown on the Palestinians.
By reversing steps toward normalization with Israel, the Arabs hope to send a message that the Jewish state will only win their acceptance by negotiating a "real peace" rather than by imposing one by force.
But Israel has put the onus on the Palestinian leadership to end the violence, just as it had at the US-led international summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Tuesday.
With the ceasefire agreed at Sharm el-Sheikh failing to take hold, Israel warned Saturday it would withdraw from the peace process if the violence did not cease by the time the summit ends on Sunday.
Such warnings sparked more angry rhetoric.
"It's a statement directed arrogantly at all Arab leaders and we're up to it," Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said.
The summit was set to open at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) with presidents, prime ministers, kings and princes or their delegates from the 22-member Arab League.
The Arab leaders are planning limited "measures" against Israel while reaffirming peace as "a strategic choice," delegates said.
Diplomats said a draft document calls on Arab countries that have relations with Israel but not a peace treaty to "stop all relations and all cooperation" with the Jewish state.
Those countries are Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania, which would have to close or freeze activities at the trade or interests missions they have exchanged with Israel, they said.
Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace treaties with Israel in 1979 and 1994, and the Palestinian Authority, which signed the Oslo accords in 1993, would not have to abide by the measure.
But US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher warned Friday that limiting ties with Israel could not help the volatile situation in the Middle East and could only hurt the chances of the US-brokered Sharm el-Sheikh truce.
The hard-hitting draft Arab document also calls for some Israelis to be prosecuted in an international court for "war crimes", and condemns Israel for "plunging the region back into a spiral of violence."
Nine Palestinians were killed in a resurgence of clashes with Israel on Friday, bringing to 123 the death toll in three weeks of violence -- 115 of the dead being Arab.
Meanwhile, Israeli helicopters and artillery pounded a border region in southern Lebanon late Friday in response to guerrilla fire, police said.
The summit proposals also stress "Arab and Islamic sovereignty" over east Jerusalem, adding that the sector should be the capital of a Palestinian state.
The current wave of violence erupted September 28 when Israel's hawkish opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited a shrine holy to Muslims and Jews in east Jerusalem, a move Palestinians saw as an attempt to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty over the area.
The Camp David summit in July, which was aimed at clinching a final Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement after seven years of direct negotiations, collapsed over the status of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital.
Syria, whose peace talks with Israel are suspended, has taken a harder line, calling instead for a complete end to Arab-Israeli links.
But Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak warned that the summit would only succeed if it focused on "reasonable" measures against Israel.
Libyan leader Moammer Kadhafi is boycotting the summit, complaining it will take too weak a stand – CAIRO (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
