Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has called on US President George W. Bush and European leaders to "actively intervene" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meanwhile, a top Palestinian leader has called for a national unity government in the face of spiraling Israeli agression.
Haaretz quoted a spokesman for the Bush administration as confirming that it had received a letter from Arafat on the subject of intervention, but would not discuss the contents. Bush has yet to send Arafat a response.
President Bush on Monday called on the Israelis and Palestinians to bring about an immediate end to the "violence," saying it would ultimately lead to disaster.
A White House spokesperson said that both sides must take action to return stability to the region so that the Mitchell Commission's recommendations could be implemented.
State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said Monday that the United States was troubled by the continuing regional violence and was considering what could be done. He stressed that the responsibility for achieving calm in the region lay with the Israelis and Palestinians, according to the paper.
Meanwhile, Fateh's top leader in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouthi, who narrowly escaped an Israeli missile attack, called on Palestinian movements to unite their resistance and form a national unity government to reinforce their 10-month-old uprising against 34 years of Israeli occupation.
"We need a national unity government with representatives from all Palestinian factions and movements, including Hamas and (Islamic) Jihad," Barghouthi was quoted by the agency as saying.
"This government should adopt the policies of the Intifada," he said.
One of Barghouthi's close aides was injured in the Ramallah rocket attack and Israel launched two similar strikes Sunday in which a member of Hamas was killed and a Palestinian security command center in Gaza was destroyed.
In the Israeli side, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Monday again brushed off the rising criticism of its policy of "targeted killings."
"We adopted a policy of counter-terrorism defensive measures: interception of kamikazes, and spoiling raids and commando actions," Sharon told a meeting of Hadassah, a charitable international association for Jewish women.
"The Palestinian Authority is heading and directing a coalition of terrorist organisations. We are exercising our right to self-defense against indiscriminate murderers who kill innocent men, women and children, like any other country would do when the life and security of its citizens are at stake," he said.
Israel's deputy infrastructure minister, Naomi Blumenthal, also defended the policy of killing Palestinian resistance fighters.
"We are talking about human beings who are inhuman," Blumenthal told AFP, referring to Palestinian activists. "They are only thinking about how to kill more Israelis."
Her comments came as Israeli security forces seized a Palestinian man they claimed was poised to launch a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, while in separate operations, two other Hamas members were arrested in the West Bank.
Israeli officials claimed the arrest of the alleged suicide bomber reinforced Sharon's comments and they blamed Arafat's Palestinian Authority for not arresting militants the Jewish state accuses of mass murder.
According to Haaretz, Sharon said in a televised interview Sunday that Israel had no intention of re-conquering Palestinian Authority territory.
The "transfer" of these territories to the PA is irreversible, and re-conquest of them was inconceivable, Sharon told the television station CNN Turkish.
Sharon said if the question was whether Israel would re-enter Gaza or Ramallah (in the West Bank), the answer was no.
However, he said, if the question was whether the government would permit "terrorists" to attack Israel from these territories, the answer was also no.
The hawkish leader, who is to begin his first state visit to Ankara on Wednesday, said he is "one of the few people who can secure a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority," because he is "the only one who can look straight into the eyes of the Israeli people and call on them to make painful sacrifices for peace."
"I can persuade the Israeli people to make these sacrifices in return for real peace," he said. "It should be known, however, that I will never sacrifice the security of the Israeli people or the existence of the Israeli state."
Nevertheless, Sharon rejected Monday a proposal by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to open a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership.
According to the proposal, Arafat would be offered a package of diplomatic incentives to encourage him to end the Palestinian uprising.
Speaking to Sharon in a one-on-one meeting, Peres presented his idea for dialogue with the Palestinians, which would be defined as talks on ways to achieve a ceasefire and not as diplomatic negotiations of any kind.
Reports have said that the Israelis have begun to question Sharon’s maxim “no negotiations under fire,” amid persistent Palestinian efforts to avenge the killings of their leaders and family members.
Sharon and Peres also held a discussion attended by their senior aides on Israel's international public relations efforts. During the meeting, Israel's PR delegations worldwide were discussed, as well as difficulties in influencing Western public opinion, added the daily.
Those present decided that Israel's main PR challenge at present was justifying its policy of assassinating Palestinian militants.
As a result of a delay in PR efforts following last Tuesday's attack on Hamas offices in Nablus in which eight people were killed, including two leading Hamas members and two children, information on the targets is now being released in the immediate aftermath of a "hit."
A list of seven Palestinians on the Israeli army’s most wanted list was also published Sunday.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, AFP estimates that Palestinians have killed 128 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to AFP, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 540 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report issued early this year, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
