Palestinian President Yasser Arafat warned Saturday of rising violence in the region and appealed to the world's industrial powers to help instill calm, the day after an explosion in Hebron leveled a Fateh party office, killing one Palestinian and wounding seven others, according to reports.
Haaretz said that two Palestinians were killed in the incident and five wounded.
Arafat did not directly comment on the Hebron blast, which Palestinians say was an Israeli assassination attempt, while Israelis allege that it was a Palestinian bomb that prematurely exploded.
However, Arafat said Hebron was just one of many cities where violence was rising to dangerous levels. He noted that Bethlehem was under a tight military siege.
"It's an Israeli attempt to escalate the situation because they think this escalation will positively effect them in the G8," Arafat said, referring to the Group of Eight meeting in Italy where leaders of the world's most powerful industrialized nations are gathered.
Highly placed Israeli security sources cited by Israeli Radio and Haaretz warned Saturday that Palestinian organizations were planning attacks within Israel to avenge the attack on the Tmeizi family by settlers that left three - including a three-month-old baby boy - dead and five wounded.
The sources claimed that the Palestinians had reduced the level of violence while the G8 summit was taking place, in an attempt to capitalize on the political implications of the attack on the family and to pressure world leaders at the summit into backing the deployment of international observers in the Occupied Territories.
An unnamed Egyptian diplomat gave the first indication that the US would be willing to send observers to the region. "The US envoy mentioned that Washington agrees that they should be American and that they should be stationed as soon as the cooling-off period begins," the diplomat told reporters.
He was referring to a meeting between Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield, who arrived in Cairo earlier Saturday.
David Satterfield, Washington's new deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, held talks Saturday in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher on the situation.
"We had a very good discussion,” Satterfield said without elaborating, according to AFP.
"We are focusing on how to move things forward in the direction of peace and resumption of the dialogue and end the violence,” the US envoy said.
Washington said last week that it would maintain "continuous contact" with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, to work for the implementation of the Mitchell plan and save the would-be ceasefire agreed upon by the two parties on June 13.
Amid increasing international pressure on Israel to accept such international observers, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Friday that while Israel still rejected the overall concept, American observers might be acceptable if the decision was forced on Israel.
"The whole matter of observers is unacceptable to us, but if this is forced on us, I will live with the presence of American monitors," Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio on Friday morning.
He said the US Central Intelligence Agency was already overseeing Israeli-Palestinian efforts to cooperate on security issues.
Pressure for international monitors has increased after a statement by the G8 countries Thursday calling for their deployment and increasing calls from the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the killing Thursday night.
A Jewish extremist group calling itself the Committee for Security on the Roads took responsibility for the attack.
The defense minister was also quoted Saturday as saying that Arafat was refusing to stop “violence.”
However, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon published an official statement Friday saying that Israel's stance on opposing any sort of deployment in the Occupied Territories had not changed.
The statement issued Thursday by the G8 countries called for a third-party force in the territories to oversee a truce between Israelis and Palestinians. "We believe," said the G8 statement, "that third-party monitoring, accepted by both parties, would serve their interests in implementing the Mitchell Report. In light of the alarming developments in the Middle East, we reaffirm that the Mitchell Report is the only way forward."
The prime minister said Thursday that the statement by the G8 countries must be accepted by both parties. "That's... what we insisted on, that no decision [by the G8] would force Israel to accept a step it doesn't want," Sharon said.
But Arafat, who has long called for international intervention, told the Palestinian news service that the statement was "a real beginning" of a return to quiet in the Occupied Territories. PA sources said that only US pressure on Israel to accept a monitoring team from overseas would lead to a truce and the implementation of the Mitchell Report recommendations.
According to Haaretz, another reason Israel objects to international monitoring is because it has been a constant Palestinian demand since the first Palestinian Intifada that began in 1987, and as such, some Israeli officials feel that the deployment of an international observer force would be tantamount to a diplomatic victory for the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, around 5,000 people participated Saturday in a funeral procession for an activist of the Fateh killed in the explosion Friday night in the West Bank city of Hebron. Gunmen fired in the air and chanted calls for revenge as the body of 28-year-old Rajai Abu Rajab was carried through the streets.
ISRAEL BLOCKS PALESTINIANS AT EGYPT BORDER
AFP reported that Israeli forces had blocked over 1,500 Palestinians on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, and were also stopping medical supplies.
A Palestinian security official told the agency Saturday that "The Israeli army has also been blocking since Wednesday the passage of urgent medical aid to the Palestinian territories."
He said the Palestinians had been held up at the border for 24 hours, unsuccessfully asking the Israelis to allow travelers to cross the border.
Israel claims a lack of personnel at the border post, but has nevertheless cut from 250 to 20 the number of Palestinian employees since the start of the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, at the end of last September, he said.
Rafah is a divided border town -- one side in Egyptian territory, the other in the Gaza Strip, in autonomous Palestinian territory.
The Palestinian side of the Rafah terminal is controlled by Israeli security services.
The Palestinian official also said Israeli authorities were only opening the Rafah crossing between 9:00am and 5:00pm, rather than the agreed 24 hours.
Late last month, more than 3,000 Palestinians were blocked for several days at Rafah because, the Palestinians said, of the "slowness of the Israeli authorities."
The Rafah crossing also closed several weeks prior to June 14 because of a blanket Israeli blockade of the territories - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
