US special envoy Anthony Zinni said Sunday if Israel and the Palestinians do not make substantial progress in stopping escalating violence within 48 hours he will quit his task to find a lasting ceasefire, an Israeli official close to security talks told AFP.
The retired Marine Corps general said "if there isn't substantial progress in the next 48 hours" he would go back to Washington, according to the Israeli official.
Zinni delivered his stern warning at a US-mediated joint security meeting held to seek a way out of 14 months of violence that has hit new peaks in the past week, with a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings being met with Israeli air and tank strikes on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The situation will be reviewed at a fresh security meeting in two days, the official said.
Zinni was sent by Washington on November 26 to find ways of defusing the Middle East crisis that has left more than 1,060 people dead, and bring both sides to a lasting ceasefire, said AFP.
Palestinian and Israeli security officials held a second round of security talks in three days, in a fresh attempt to contain a bloody conflict that saw the killing of five Palestinians on the day and the injury of several Israelis in a failed suicide attack.
Palestinian security sources told AFP in the afternoon that the meeting was underway at an undisclosed location in Tel Aviv but provided no immediate details on who was attending the talks or whether US officials, who attended Friday's session, also took part.
The meeting came hours after Israeli troops killed four Palestinian police officers during an incursion in the West Bank while a fifth man, a Palestinian taxi driver, was killed by machine-gun fire from an Israeli tank in Jenin, also in the West Bank.
A Palestinian suicide bomber tried to blow himself up at a bus station in the northern Israeli city of Haifa the same day, wounding more than 20 people. The militant was seriously injured and later shot dead by Israeli police.
The bomber was identified as Nimer Sifen, 20, from Yamun, near Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Sifen left a note in his house saying his deed was in revenge for Israeli attacks against Palestinians, Army Radio said, quoting Palestinian sources.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli forces arrested some 30 Palestinians in a raid on the village of Anabta near Tulkarm early this morning before leaving the village later.
Eight of the Palestinians are wanted for security offences, said the paper.
The report claimed that explosive belts used in suicide bombings, explosives and a bomb-making workshop were discovered in the combined special forces operation, in which the four policemen were killed.
Within the same context, Israeli sappers safely detonated a roadside charge near Bethlehem during the day.
The device was discovered on the heavily traveled Bethlehem bypass road that connects occupied Jerusalem and the Gush Etzion bloc of Jewish settlements to the south.
The US State Department has renewed its warning to US citizens to defer travel to Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, because of continuing violence – Albawaba.com
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