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Palestinians Blame Israel For Impasse In Ceasefire Talks
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| Palestinians: Israel to blame for impasse on ceasefire talks |
RAMALLAH, March 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel is responsible for the impasse in ceasefire talks because it ignores Palestinian demands, a senior Palestinian official said Saturday.
"Israel wants to apply neither the Tenet plan nor the Mitchell recommendations," information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"It wants only to arrive at a ceasefire without undertaking a (political) step. The Israelis want to be judges and decide alone. No serious development has been registered until now," during the meetings of the joint Israeli-Palestinian security high committee, Abed Rabbo said.
Senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials ended a U.S.-hosted meeting on Friday without reaching a hoped-for truce, but agreed to talk again Sunday.
The Palestinian head of public security in the Gaza Strip, General Abdel Razaq al-Majaida, said Israel insisted on an approach based solely on security and refused to discuss Palestinian political demands.
"We reject this way of going about the talks," he told Al-Ayam newspaper, close to the Palestinian Authority.
U.S. special Mideast peace envoy Anthony Zinni was "doing his best to obtain a ceasefire in the (coming) two days," he said.
Meanwhile, an official close to the Palestinian delegation said the "Palestinians do not expect much from the security talks because of Israel's intransigence, and are not optimistic about an acceptance of their demands.
"I don't think that we can arrive at a truce in due form. We must be happy with a period of actual relative calm," he said on condition of anonymity.
There has been no comment Saturday from the Israeli side as to why there has been no breakthrough in the talks.
In continuous aggression, Israeli occupation troops near a southern Gaza strip crossing point shot dead a Palestinian civilian early Saturday, hospital sources said.
Nabil al-Ghafor, 24, was shot several times in the village of Al-Qarara, near the Kissufim border crossing, the sources said.
Another Palestinian was killed Friday night by the Israeli army in the same area. And Nidal Alami, 20, died after he was hit in the head Friday by a live bullet during clashes in Beit Ummar, a village near the West Bank town of Hebron, Palestinian medical sources said.
Alami, a student at Hebron University, was not armed but was throwing stones at the army, according to Palestinian security sources.
A four-year-old Palestinian girl was declared brain dead after being wounded by Israeli troops in a raid into the southern Gaza Strip on Friday, Palestinian hospital sources said.
The girl, Riham Hussam Abu Taha, was declared clinically dead after taking a bullet in the head in front of her Rafah home on Thursday, the hospital sources said.
The death of Abu Taha brings the number of children who died in Rafah to 46. Palestinian sources said that most of the children were shot in their play areas and in their own home backyards away from the areas of conflict.
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