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Israeli
activists call for immediate withdrawal from the territories
and a return to the negotiating table
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, March 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli and
Palestinian security officials met late Sunday in the Gaza Strip and
West Bank, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer told the
Israeli second national television channel.
"There
are Sunday night meetings between security officials of both sides in
the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank," Ben Eliezer said, without
offering any more details about the talks. These talks come amid a
visit by special U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni to try and reach a ceasefire
in the 18 months of fighting.
An
Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman confirmed that "meetings
between field level commanders were held this evening in [both] the
Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) in order to begin a
process of cooling things down," Israel's daily newspaper,
Haaretz, reported.
Israel's
Channel Two reported Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer as saying that a
cease-fire could be announced within 48 hours, the daily added.
However,
Israeli military radio said the meeting in the West Bank took place in
Bethlehem, where Israeli occupation tanks rolled in earlier in the day
and sparked clashes which left a Palestinian dead, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The
meetings were aimed at regaining the control of Palestinian areas
recently re-occupied by Israeli troops during their biggest push into
Palestinian territories since the 1967 Middle East war, it said. It
also confirmed Zinni had arranged the meetings.
Ben
Eliezer said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who ended his third
meeting with Zinni on Sunday night, "is the only one who can
control the situation on the ground."
"We
have no choice, we have to give him [Arafat] another chance and we'll
see in a few days during General Zinni's mission if we were
mistaken," he said.
He
added that he was not excluding the possibility of "a declaration
of a ceasefire within 48 hours, but the problem is what will happen
after and most of all its implementation."
Ben
Eliezer was vague on whether Israel would allow Arafat to attend an
important Arab summit in Beirut later this month, which is expected to
formalize a Saudi land-for-peace initiative.
"I
am in favor of the principle of letting him go, but there is still a
lot of time and we have to see how things will evolve from now until
then," he said.
Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government announced last Monday that
Arafat, who had been kept under virtual house arrest in the West Bank
town of Ramallah since early December, was now free to travel within
the Palestinian territories, but not outside them.
As
the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney tours the Middle to ease tensions
to start the peace negotiations, Israeli occupation forces abducted
seven Palestinians overnight Monday in five raids by the Israeli
occupation army and police on the West Bank, a military spokesman
announced.
Two
of the raids were carried out by the occupation army on the
Palestinian autonomous Zone 'A' and two others on Zone 'B' under
Israeli security control, while the fifth was by police on the
Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
In
the village of Jdeideh near Jenin in the north of the West Bank,
troops captured two Palestinians suspected of being activists with the
resistance movement Hamas.
Cheney,
who is on an 11-nation tour of the Middle East, arrives in Israel on
Monday after a stopover in Kuwait. Cheney is due to meet Israeli
hawkish premier Ariel Sharon soon after his arrival in Israel. A
senior U.S. official said Cheney had left open his schedule for a
possible meeting with a Palestinian delegation, but no firm plans had
been made.
BC's
online news services reported that expectations of a real breakthrough
to end the conflict remain low.
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