A gun battle in Hebron and the launching of mortars and hand grenades in Gaza hampered efforts by the Israelis and Palestinians on Wednesday to maintain a cease-fire agreement in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in the United States.
Early Thursday morning, Israeli radio reported that an Israeli woman was killed in a drive-by shooting near the city of Bethlehem, adding to Israeli pessimism that the cease-fire would hold. The woman’s husband was wounded.
On Wednesday, Palestinian police patrolled points of friction in the West Bank and Gaza as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat traveled to Egypt and Jordan to consult with Arab leaders there.
The Israelis, ending a two-day celebration of the Jewish New Year, said Wednesday they noted a decrease in violence and would decide as soon as Thursday whether to proceed with plans for truce talks between Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has insisted that the talks not occur until after 48 hours of complete quiet. Both sides expressed skepticism that such a condition could be met.
Under U.S. pressure to end the violence, Arafat on Tuesday ordered his security forces to halt all shooting at the Israelis, even in self-defense. Israel responded by withdrawing tanks and troops from two Palestinian cities and ordering its army to stop all “initiated” attacks.
Bush taking more active role
Since the terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Bush administration has been pushing harder on the two sides to end the nearly year-old Mideast crisis so it does not interfere with American efforts to build a broad global coalition against terrorism.
Worried about the Palestinians, several Arab and Muslim states have expressed reservations about joining unless the U.S. becomes more active in solving the Mideast problem.
On Tuesday, President Bush welcomed the joint Israeli-Palestinian efforts, placing a special onus on Arafat to get the violence under control.
“I hope in my heart of hearts that out of this evil [the terror attacks] comes good [a Mideast truce],” Bush said in Washington. “I would hope that Chairman Arafat backs up his strong statements with action.”
Since the Palestinian uprising began nearly a year ago, more than 750 people have been killed, the majority of them Palestinians.
Reportedly, the two sides agreed Wednesday to resume meetings between their security officials. In recent months, all efforts to resume security cooperation to calm the violence failed when joint meetings broke down into bickering and accusations.
Israeli officials said a relative quiet prevailed just after midnight Tuesday. It was broken Wednesday evening when about two hours of gunfire broke out between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers in the volatile city of Hebron.
The army fired as many as four tank shells during the skirmish. Each side blamed the other for the shooting, during which a Palestinian police officer reportedly was killed and five other Palestinians wounded, one seriously.
Before the shooting, Palestinian police had patrolled their portion of the city for the first time in months, and police commanders said they had been given orders to stop the violence at all costs.
The Israelis said that Palestinians also threw grenades at an Israeli army post near the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. That has been an almost daily occurrence in the area, which the Israelis blame on elements within Arafat’s Fatah faction.
Palestinian officials said Wednesday that a cease-fire would be difficult to maintain unless Israel went further in withdrawing its forces from Palestinian land.
So far, the Israelis have pulled back their tanks from the West Bank cities of Jenin and Jericho, where they had been enforcing a siege.
Blockades still in force
The Palestinians reported that blockades were still in force around most other cities. Voice of Palestine Radio said people were throwing stones and protesting in Qalqilya.
“The withdrawal from areas in Jenin and Jericho was not enough,” said Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, an Arafat aide. “All acts of occupation, siege and closure, trenches, tanks, military checkpoints … must be ended.”
In Gaza, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the radical Hamas movement, reiterated his group’s rejection of Arafat’s agreement to a cease-fire and said Islamic militants would fight as long as Israel occupies Palestinian lands.
Yassin also accused the United States of trying to wage war against Islam.
“They should know that religious battles are long and wild,” Yassin said. “They have to look back at the experience of the Crusades. Eventually they [the Crusaders] were defeated.”
