Israel said on Thursday it has struck a deal with the Palestinians to try to end the tide of deadly violence that has raged in the Palestinian territories for more than a month and left peace in tatters.
It said the agreement was reached at a meeting between former Israeli prime minister and Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after an upsurge of violence that killed six Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers in gunbattles on Wednesday.
"During a meeting held tonight (Wednesday) in Gaza, an understanding was reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority concerning a number of steps on the basis of Sharm el-Sheikh which are supposed to bring about a renewal of the security cooperation and a cessation to the violence and incitement," a spokesman for Barak told AFP.
Peres said that Israelis and Palestinians have drawn up a timetable to end the violence, and get back to normal relations.
"Under this agreement on ending the violence, if after two days there are no shootings or burials, a new situation will have been created which will enable us to talk about normalizing relations," Peres said.
This would include lifting the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territories and allowing free movement, and resuming peace negotiations, he added.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian official confirmed that the Palestinian Authority had reached an understanding with Israel to halt the violence.
"We reached an understanding to stop the violence," presidential secretary Tayeb Abdel Rahim told AFP.
He said the two sides would be issuing a formal announcement about the deal later Thursday but did not give a time.
In the meantime, senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials began meetings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday to follow up on the truce to end the violence, a senior Palestinian official told AFP.
At the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last month, the two sides agreed on a US-brokered truce but it was never implemented on the ground.
"This understanding has brought about a freezing of the responsive measures that were discussed tonight by the cabinet for the purpose of utilizing the chance to stop the violence," according to a statement read by the spokesman.
"(Barak) expressed hope that this would bring an end to the violence," it added.
Peres, who helped forge the 1993 Oslo peace accords and won the Nobel peace prize along with Arafat and slain Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, met Arafat for some two hours.
Israeli public radio reported that Barak and Arafat were due to make separate public announcements of the deal at around noon (1000 GMT).
In other diplomatic moves, Barak's acting foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami held talks in Washington with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who is calling on both sides to implement a truce agreed in Egypt earlier this month.
"It's critical that both parties move immediately to implement those commitments. Once that's been achieved, we can focus on restoring confidence in the peace process and finding a way back to the negotiating table," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Ben Ami said after the meeting that the violence needed to be dealt with not as a civilian uprising but as a military confrontation.
"We are not confronting here a so-called peaceful Intifada," Ben Ami told reporters. "It is a mini war."
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat was also due to visit the States for meetings with Albright and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. However, he said he had been prevented from leaving Jericho because of an Israeli closure of the town.
The Palestinians have asked the United Nations to deploy 2,000 observers to protect their civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, according to a document released Wednesday by the Palestinian mission to the world body.
Human rights group Amnesty International charged that Israeli forces might be guilty of war crimes against Palestinian protesters, by shooting unarmed demonstrators, many of them children - JERUSALEM (AFP)
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