A tumultuous night of negotiations ended Thursday morning with Israel agreeing to pull back tanks and other heavy weapons from the flash points of violence in Gaza and the West Bank. But the concessions reached in sometimes-heated exchanges were not formalized and fell short of an outright cease-fire.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to the pullback under intense pressure from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and French President Jacques Chirac after hours of talks that also involved U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
In return, Arafat pledged that Palestinian security forces would keep demonstrators from approaching three sensitive points in Gaza and the West Bank. The region has seen seven straight days of fighting that has left at least 64 dead and 1,800 injured, most of them Palestinian.
As outlined by Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. officials late Wednesday, an agreement yet to be initialed by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders would restore Israeli troop and weapons dispositions to their places prior to the outbreak of violence last week.
As of early Thursday when negotiators reached a pause in the talks, the Israelis and Palestinians were unable to formalize the proposed concessions in a completed agreement.
At one point Wednesday, Arafat stormed out of the talks and was on the verge of driving out of the U.S. Embassy compound, declaring, “This is humiliation; I cannot accept it!” An agitated Albright, appearing in the courtyard, ordered the gates closed and Arafat, in effect, locked in. “Shut the gates! Shut the gates!” she was heard to say.
Witnesses saw the scene unfold from behind barricades just outside the embassy. Reuters news service described the incident, in part, based on clearly audible exchanges over a portable telephone on which a Palestinian negotiator was speaking with a Reuters reporter.
Meanwhile, fierce fighting erupted in Gaza on Wednesday as Israelis fired armor-piercing missiles after an isolated Israeli army post was fired upon. But in many Israeli Arab towns and Palestinian territories there was an uneasy pause in the fighting as the center of gravity in the worst Israeli-Palestinian crisis in four years shifted from the sun-baked crossroads of Gaza and the West Bank to the rainy boulevards of Paris.
The talks were to continue Thursday in Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak, who has been as vocal as Chirac in his criticism of Israel, was expected to pressure Barak to accept an independent investigatory commission to examine the causes of the violence.
For its part, Israel insists that “cessation of violence is a precondition for any continuation of the negotiations.”
With hopes for progress in the Mideast peace accord now dashed amid rock-throwing, gunfire and rioting, the Clinton administration is struggling to save what it can of a carefully nurtured peace process.
But while the Paris negotiations were arranged by Albright, she was upstaged by Chirac, who conducted several one-on-one meetings throughout the day with Arafat and Barak and concluded the evening’s deliberations with a news conference at the Elysee Palace, a few doors from where Albright held her series of talks. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also participated in some of the sessions.
With international opinion tilted sharply against Israel for alleged excessive use of force in quelling demonstrations, there were signs Wednesday of restraint from within the ranks of Israeli security forces. Rock-throwing by Palestinian youths–which a few days ago would have prompted gunfire, rocket or even cannon fire–went unanswered through much of Wednesday.
The focus in Paris was on who was to blame for the eruption of violence and how to stop it.
The fighting was sparked almost a week ago after right-wing political leader Ariel Sharon and a phalanx of guards and colleagues visited a holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City that is revered by Muslims and Jews. Sharon, the Likud Party leader who could challenge Barak if new elections are held, declared that the holy site would be forever Israel’s. Arab-Israelis, who make up one-sixth of Israel’s population, and Palestinians erupted in protests. The trouble quickly escalated to violent clashes with Israeli soldiers that have continued for seven days.
While the willingness of Arafat and Barak to meet suggested a desire to end the fighting quickly and return to the peace process, the leaders arrived in Paris speaking of each other in harsh tones, abandoning the U.S.-brokered strategy of publicly saying as little as possible to avoid stirring emotions.
“We hold Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority responsible for the initiation of the wave of violence and we believe the Palestinian leadership has to make up its mind whether they intend to make a peace agreement,” Barak said after a meeting with Chirac at Elysee Palace. “We are ready to put an end to it immediately.”
For his part, Arafat began the day threatening to snub Barak, with whom he had broken bread just last week in a private meeting at Barak’s home on the eve of the fighting. Arafat insisted that Israel accept an international committee investigation on the cause of the violence.
Arafat decried the “serious massacre which is being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.”
Israeli officials said Barak “totally rejected” the Palestinians’ demand for an independent commission to investigate the violence.
Although the United States has refrained from openly condemning Israel’s response to the Palestinian protests, Albright’s choice of venues for the meetings suggested that much of the frustration in Washington was aimed at Barak’s government. France’s Chirac has been sharply critical of the Israeli response and condemned Sharon’s action as an “irresponsible provocation.”
On Thursday, Albright, Barak and Arafat were to shift to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt for more talks with another host, Mubarak, who has sharply criticized Israel.
In Paris, CIA Director George Tenet joined the talks, underscoring the current emphasis on security issues between the Israelis and Palestinians. In recent years, the CIA has served as a broker of sorts between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, acting as an arbiter when one side complained about a lack of cooperation by the other on things such as arrests, border crossings or release of prisoners.
In a compromise plank of the agreement, Israeli and Palestinian security forces will make an immediate assessment of the security situation with CIA supervision.
The Paris talks took place behind a curtain of security in the elegant official residence of Felix Rohatyn, the U.S. ambassador to France, just down the street from Elysee Palace.
As is her custom, Albright met first with Barak, a courtesy that reflects his position as head of Israel’s government. Arafat heads an entity the United States does not recognize as a country. After the individual rounds, Albright held a second, unplanned one-on-one session with Barak, then conferred briefly alone with Arafat before the three met together.
The three-way meeting was delayed for much of the day as Arafat insisted that Israel agree to guarantee the safety of Palestinians and accept an outside commission’s jurisdiction to investigate fault in the violence. Ultimately, Arafat was persuaded to meet Barak anyway.
More than four hours of meetings ensued, sometimes involving sizable entourages and other times just Albright, the two leaders and one or two senior aides. As the talks ground on in one of Paris’ most elegant neighborhoods, an area dotted with fine restaurants, sandwiches were brought in to the negotiators. After midnight, the negotiators returned to Elysee Palace to brief Chirac, who made a short statement praising the progress made Wednesday.
Sharon, under increasing international attack for his role in sparking the violence, responded with an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal defending his actions and blaming the Palestinians for what he called a “premeditated campaign” of violence.
Sharon’s visit touched what is by far the most sensitive nerve in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The main sticking point in the peace talks has been over whether Israel or the Palestinians–or some international entity–will control Jerusalem’s holy sites. The holy place most in dispute is the very site visited by Sharon. Further underscoring the divide between Israelis and Palestinians, there is no agreement on what the location is to be called.
Jews refer to it as the Temple Mount and believe it to be the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples, the latter of which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. Palestinians call it the Haram ash Sharif, or noble sanctuary. The elevated plaza encompasses the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque, third holiest place in Islam, the site from which the Prophet Muhammad saw himself in a dream ascending into heaven.
In the peace talks, Arafat has been insisting on Palestinian sovereignty over the mosque complex while showing a willingness to consider some sort of international control. Barak, pressured from Israel’s political right, has balked at giving up sovereignty over the site, although Israel is willing to allow the Palestinians to fly their flag over the mosques.
“Neither I nor any Israeli citizen–Arab or Jew–needs to seek permission from the Palestinian Authority or from any foreign entity, to visit the Temple Mount or any other site in the sovereign territory of the state of Israel,” Sharon wrote in his opinion piece. “Despite the harsh events, I still believe we can achieve peace, [but] it cannot be peace at any price.”
