February 26, 2002
Israel and the Palestinians resumed security talks Tuesday despite a new burst of violence, and a Saudi peace initiative gathered fresh momentum after the Palestinians and some Israeli officials welcomed it.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will hold previously unscheduled talks with the man behind the peace plan -- Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah -- on Wednesday in Riyadh, Solana told reporters after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Solana said Sharon told him he was ``willing to meet anybody from Saudi Arabia, formally, informally, publicly, discreetly, whatever, to get better information about the significance of this idea.'' Palestinians have praised the initiative.
Despite ongoing tensions, Israeli and Palestinian security officials met in Tel Aviv to resume talks about stopping the violence, Palestinian officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Israeli Defense Ministry refused to comment. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said earlier that the security contacts -- suspended over the weekend after Israel's refusal to end Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's confinement to the West Bank town of Ramallah -- should resume quickly.
Meanwhile, there was growing interest in the Saudi proposal, under which Israel would withdraw from the territories it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war, in return for comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Tuesday called the proposal a ``positive development'' with ``extraordinary importance,'' but added his reservations about defining borders. ``For the first time, Saudi Arabia is openly taking the side of the peace process,'' he said in Paris after talks with French President Jacques Chirac.
Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer -- like Peres, a member of the center-left Labor Party -- said in a statement that the plan ``contains positive elements and should be encouraged.'' He also said that ``it must not be rejected,'' a comment apparently aimed at hard-line Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Sharon advisers said they were still trying to hear from U.S. officials whether the Saudis were serious. ``We think it is too early to comment on the substance on the basis of media reports,'' said Danny Ayalon, a Sharon aide. ``However, if we find there is something to it, we will respond accordingly.''
The Palestinians and moderate Arabs have welcomed the Saudi idea, and Secretary of State Colin Powell said it was an important step he hoped would be fleshed out in the next few weeks. Sharon has fiercely opposed a total pullout. But he knows Israelis are despondent over 17 months of dead-end conflict and eager for a ray of hope. The Saudi proposal offers two things Israel craves: broad acceptance by Arab states and a negotiating partner beyond Arafat.
However, any discussion of significant concessions to Palestinians could undermine Sharon's governing coalition -- a patchwork of parties with widely divergent positions on the land-for-peace idea. Israel's influential Haaretz daily urged Sharon in an editorial Tuesday to give the Saudi plan serious consideration. ``The Saudi plan is an opportunity to sign a peace treaty with most of the Arab world (except for countries like Libya and Iraq), including the Palestinians,'' the editorial said.
Another newspaper, Maariv, published a front-page commentary by its editor-in-chief, Amnon Dankner, in support of the Saudi plan. Written as a letter to Sharon, the commentary said that ``the Saudi initiative could be the straw that saves you.'' In Riyadh, meanwhile, an editorial Tuesday in the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan said no Israeli-Saudi visits will be held until a Mideast peace agreement has been reached.
The day before, Israeli President Moshe Katsav informally invited Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to Jerusalem to detail the Saudi proposal. Katsav also said he would go to Riyadh if invited. ``An exchange of visits -- if it takes place -- will only occur to solidify agreements that had been signed and not at the start of an initiative that the Israelis have yet to take a clear and specific stand on,'' the state-controlled Al Watan wrote.
In new fighting Tuesday, three Palestinian civilians were wounded by Israeli tank and machine gun fire toward their homes in the Rafah refugee camp, doctors said. An 18-year-old was seriously wounded, and a 15-month-old girl and her 25-year-old mother were hurt by shrapnel, doctors at Rafah's hospital said. Witnesses said soldiers fired seven tank shells and also aimed machine gun fire at the camp.
The Israeli military said shots were fired at a nearby Israeli army post, and that troops returned fire. On Monday, three Israelis were killed in Palestinian shooting attacks and two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops.
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