The long-awaited meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is scheduled to take place on Wednesday in Gaza, after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave the go-ahead Tuesday.
According to the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper, Arafat and Peres are expected to discuss the terms of a long-term ceasefire to build on the fragile truce declared by both sides last week.
The most recent effort at a truce has, however, been rocked by fighting that has left two Israeli women and a Palestinian man dead.
Sharon confirmed the much-delayed meeting would finally go ahead Wednesday in a phone conversation with British counterpart Tony Blair, a Downing Street spokesman was quoted by AFP as saying on Tuesday.
Blair was trying to smooth out a diplomatic spat after his foreign secretary, Jack Straw, ruffled Israeli feathers with remarks linking the US terror attacks to the situation in Palestine.
The much-delayed confirmation of the meeting came just a few hours after Arafat's first official trip to Syria in five years had been cancelled in a fiasco on the runway at Amman's airport – with each side blaming the other for the cancellation.
It also came after Sharon had on two occasions banned Peres from meeting the Palestinian president - allegedly, according to the former Israeli general, for the Palestinians' inability to maintain a sustainable ceasefire.
Arafat had been scheduled to fly in to renew ties with Syria after 20 years of deteriorating relations, strained in particular by Damascus' objection to Arafat's peace accords with Israel in 1993.
The Israeli army's radio - cited in a report by the liberal daily Haaretz - reported that the meeting would take place only if quiet in the territories continued.
The Haaretz report added that the meeting would be held at 9:30am, quoting Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer. Palestinian sources said the meeting would take place at the Palestinian airport at Dahaniya, near Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Arafat arrived back at Gaza on Tuesday.
The talks will take place before the start of the day-long Yom Kippur Jewish holiday.
TATTERED CEASEFIRE HANGS BY THREAD
A rather fragile ceasefire, the fourth since the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began almost exactly a year ago, had been declared by both sides last week.
Israel said it would not take any offensive actions against Palestinians, and President Arafat shortly afterwards issued orders to his forces not to return fire even if they came under fire.
Palestinian groups, however, plan to celebrate the first anniversary of the intifada against 34 years of Israeli military occupation on Friday.
Peres said Tuesday that there had been a "dramatic" drop in violence in the Occupied Territories and that Arafat was making a "serious" effort to reduce the violence.
But he said it was unrealistic to expect zero shooting in a volatile region rocked by decades of wars and attacks.
"It is very difficult to reach the point of zero shooting," Peres told Israel Radio. "The fact is, there is a drop [in violence]. It's not enough, [and] it's not absolute. We have to continue working. I am one of the people who is trying to bring about a ceasefire under the very difficult conditions that exist."
Peres had met Sharon on Monday in order to resolve their differences concerning Peres' desire to meet with Arafat and Sharon's ban on such meetings. Sharon and Peres agreed that the foreign minister would not meet Arafat on Monday and that the meeting should be put off for another 48 hours.
Citing an unnamed senior aide to Sharon, Haaretz said that the drive-by killing of an Israeli woman by Palestinian gunmen in the Jordan Valley, had again reset the 48-hour clock for a Arafat-Peres truce meeting, which US officials were placing huge pressure on Sharon to allow amid objections and threats by Israeli right-wing politicians.
Sharon had demanded the 48 hours of quiet between the Palestinians and Israelis before he would allow the meeting to take place.
The right-wing Israeli premier finally bowed to pressure to allow the meeting, clearing the way for US efforts to form a worldwide coalition against terrorism which will include key Arab states.
Peres also criticized former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is presently in the United States, over comments he made that the Bush administration was not exerting any pressure on Israel regarding a meeting with Arafat, according to the paper.
"Benjamin Netanyahu is not the president of the United States," a derisive Peres was quoted by the daily as saying. "Just because he's now in the US, does that make him the US president? During this extremely difficult situation, the American president calls [Sharon] and asks for the meeting to take place. [US Secretary of State] Colin Powell [is] not exactly an unemployed secretary of state like Benjamin Netanyahu who is busy giving lectures.
"[Powell] phones three times a day to ask for the meeting to take place. And Benjamin Netanyahu has the audacity to speak for the Americans."
Much to Peres' chagrin, Netanyahu lashed back, calling him "the first Israeli astronaut."
"He is floating around in outer space," Netanyahu was quoted by the paper as saying. "He is completely cut off from reality. He lives in an imaginary world. And he doesn't learn a thing from his mistakes. He said that the Oslo agreement would bring an end to terror. Instead we have gotten unprecedented terror."
Despite the significant breakthrough, however, and as the Israelis and the Palestinians struggled to open the door to the Peres-Arafat meeting, scattered violence still delivered more blows to the fragile ceasefire on Tuesday which both sides are trying to maintain, according to a report by AFP.
Citing unnamed witnesses, the report added that Israeli troops shot and slightly wounded four Palestinians in the tense West Bank town of Hebron while the men were trying to illegally enter the Jewish state to go to work.
The Israeli army, meanwhile, accused Palestinian militants of firing several mortar rounds in the Gaza Strip, one of which exploded in Israeli territory across the northern boundary, without causing any injuries, while another exploded close to the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, according to Jewish settlers quoted by AFP.
The Israeli army reported that a mortar round had been fired at the Gush Katif in the southern Gaza Strip during the night, but had not caused any casualties.
Citing an army spokesman, AFP added that several dozen grenades were thrown at an army position close to Rafah on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, also without wounding anyone, and that automatic rifle fire also targeted other Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip overnight.
But Palestinian security chief General Abdelrazek Majaidah categorically denied that his men had opened fire overnight.
"There was no mortar fire against Gush Katif and there were no automatic rifle attacks," he told AFP.
Ben Eliezer said Tuesday he was thinking of closing the road in the Jordan Valley to Palestinians to prevent further ambushes.
Israel issued orders that Palestinians must travel only in convoys after gunmen in a lone car overtook an Israeli vehicle earlier this month and killed two Jewish settlers.
Despite that order, gunmen from the radical group Islamic Jihad, which has refused to recognize the ceasefire, repeated the drive-by operation on Monday, killing a 28-year-old Israeli woman - Albawaba.com
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