|
Barak Heads Back To Washington As Israel Bombards West Bank Villages
by Tanya Willmer
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's talks with U.S. President Bill Clinton, aimed at ending six weeks of bloodshed, were back on again Sunday after the peaceful end to a dramatic hijacking as violence continued to grip the Palestinian territories.
Barak headed for Washington amid a fierce Israeli bombardment on several Arab villages in the West Bank following shooting attacks by Palestinian gunmen on Israeli cars and buses near Jerusalem.
It followed another bloody day in the Palestinian territories on Saturday that left six Palestinians and an Israeli soldier dead, all of whom were buried on Sunday along with another Israeli killed earlier.
The latest deaths brought the number killed to 210 since the bloodletting was unleashed by a controversial visit by Israeli hardline opposition leader Ariel Sharon to a disputed holy site in Jerusalem on September 28th.
Barak turned back while en route to his talks with Clinton after the hijacking of a Russian plane that landed in Israel at dawn. He later decided to continue to Washington after the lone hijacker surrendered and all 58 passengers and crew were released unharmed.
The army described the hijacker as a "mentally unbalanced" man who had threatened to blow up the airliner with a bomb that turned out to be fake.
David Ziso, a spokesperson for Barak, said the prime minister himself, who was in London when the drama unfolded, had given the authorization for the plane to land in Israel.
"He then decided to return to the United States given the positive developments in the matter," said Ziso.
Barak's security advisor Danny Yatom said the meeting would be taking place at 2200 GMT. Asked about expectations for the talks he told reporters on Barak's plane, "We will wait and see."
Barak has expressed little hope that his talks with Clinton would succeed in ending the violence that has left the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in tatters.
"I am pessimistic about the chances of re-launching the political process with the Palestinians after my meeting with Clinton," he said Friday.
In new violence on Sunday, Israel used tanks and combat helicopters to blast Arab villages near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, leaving at least 15 people injured, witnesses and hospital officials said.
Among the injured were two 12-year-old Palestinian boys, one of whom was in serious condition.
The heavy bombardment of the villages of Beit Jala and al-Khader to the west of Bethlehem from the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo was in response to automatic weapon fire from Beit Jala, military sources said.
It also followed what the Israel army said was shooting attacks by Palestinian gunmen on Israeli cars and buses traveling in the same area between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
Palestinian sources said a group calling itself the "Hussein Abeyat brigade" claimed responsibility for the shooting, which the army said caused no casualties.
Abeyat, 37, a military official of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah group, was killed by an Israeli helicopter gunship on Thursday in which the Israelis said they deliberately targeted.
In the Gaza Strip, a roadside bomb exploded near the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom as two carloads of settlers were passing, causing no casualties but damaging the vehicles, an army spokesperson said.
The Damascus-based Forces of the Martyr Omar al-Mukhtar, part of the radical splinter Fatah-Intifada group, claimed responsibility for the blast.
Four Palestinians were also injured in clashes at the flashpoint Karni crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Israel, and another was wounded in similar confrontations at the Erez border-crossing further north.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, some 5,000 Palestinians joined the funerals for two men killed in El-Bireh to the north of Ramallah during a late-night Israeli bombardment Saturday.
Two Israeli soldiers killed in clashes Friday near Bethlehem and Saturday in the Gaza Strip were buried Sunday.
In Doha, Qatar, Arafat vowed to keep up the anti-Israeli uprising on Sunday as Iran urged the world's Muslim states at a summit in the Qatari capital to take "resolute action" against the Jewish state.
"Our people are now more than ever determined to pursue their struggle," Arafat told the three-day summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
"It is an uprising for liberty and independence to shake off the clutches of occupation," he said. "The Palestinian people know the importance of the sacrifices they have to make to realize this objective."
But U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, a summit observer, said the Palestinian dream of statehood could only be achieved through the peace process rather than through violence.
|
