Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has rejected the idea of a three-way meeting between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and UN chief Kofi Annan. During his meeting with Annan in Jerusalem, Sharon also rejected speeding up the implementation of the Mitchell commission report's recommendations.
The three-way meeting was requested by Arafat, Israel Radio reported, quoting Sharon as saying that “if the meeting took place, it would create the impression that Israel was prepared to negotiate under fire.”
Sharon also rejected a request by Annan to speed up implementation of the Mitchell report recommendations, asserting that the six-week cooling-off period required before the diplomatic elements of the Mitchell report were implemented, would only begin once the Palestinians ended the “violence” completely, said the report.
The Mitchell report on the Middle East situation calls for a six-week period of calm and a series of confidence-building measures including a halt to Jewish settlement-building in occupied Palestinian territories and action by the Palestinians against “terrorism.”
Sharon also insisted that the Palestinians must implement a total ceasefire before the current tight security is eased in the Palestinian territories.
Sharon made his comments during a working dinner with Annan, who had earlier held talks with Arafat in a bid to bolster the fragile ceasefire.
Israel and the Palestinians accuse each other of breaching the ceasefire, which began Wednesday.
In the first such incident since the Intifada began nearly nine months ago, a Palestinian child was killed when residents of the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah attempted to prevent other Palestinians from breaching the ceasefire, said AFP.
Sulaiman Al Masri was killed and three other Palestinians from Rafah, including a doctor, were injured in the Tel El Sultan neighborhood, when residents tried to stop a group of masked men from firing on a nearby Israeli position, a Palestinian security official said.
Orders have been given to arrest Palestinians described as "outlaws" for attacking Israeli soldiers "in violation of orders by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat," the same sources told AFP.
Masri's death seemed to echo comments by Arafat after his meeting with Annan, saying that despite the ceasefire agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians, "nothing had changed on the ground."
Even so, a senior Palestinian official said the two sides would meet Sunday to begin preparing a timetable for Israel to lift its crippling blockade on the Palestinian territories.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, Reuters reports that Palestinians have killed approximately 88 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. The latest suicide bombing raises that toll by at least 20. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 450 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s. The most recent Israeli tank attack raises that death toll to at least 453.
According to Amnesty International, 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)
