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Israeli-Palestinian Battles Again, Killing Two
Fighting flared again between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians Thursday, hours after both sides announced cease-fires to end a week of violence that has killed 69 people, mainly Palestinians.
A 20-year-old Palestinian was shot to death by a bullet to his chest in the West Bank town of Beit Jala near Bethlehem, the director of Beit Jala hospital told Reuters.
The director said at least one of the wounded admitted to the hospital had been struck by a dumdum bullet, designed to explode inside the body.
The Israeli army said Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers exchanged fire at Netzarim junction, a flashpoint near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. Witnesses said a Palestinian man was shot dead as he tried to rip down an Israeli flag from the military post at the junction.
Security officials of both sides had said earlier in the day they had reached an agreement during the night to cease fire, and Israel swiftly withdrew tanks stationed at the entrances to Palestinian towns in the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, back in Israel after U.S.-hosted peace talks in Paris, said he was not sure the Palestinians were seeking peace.
``The significance of the possibility that we don't have a ready partner for peace at the moment are long-term. They can be connected to deadlock, deterioration and conflict, and could cost not a small amount of blood,'' Barak told reporters.
The leader of the Jewish state said a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians was not scheduled, but that Israel would pursue the peace process until it proved futile.
Then, Barak said, ``the reality that will arise and the nature of the conflict that we may face will oblige us to consider broadening the government,'' in an apparent reference to bringing the right-wing Likud opposition party into government.
Barak now leads a minority government, having lost his parliamentary majority when three coalition partners deserted him to protest against concessions they said he would make to the Palestinians.
The Palestinian-Israel street battles erupted last Thursday after the hawkish Likud chairman Ariel Sharon visited a Jerusalem shrine holy to Muslims and Jews. Arabs said the act defiled the site.
Three Earlier Cease-Fires Failed
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, returning from U.S.-hosted peace talks in Paris, made a new demand for an international inquiry to be set up to investigate the clashes.
``We will insist... on the necessity and the importance of convening an international fact-finding panel on what our people have suffered from massacres and severe aggression that violate international law,'' he told reporters after arriving back in the Gaza Strip.
Arafat's Fatah faction in Nablus issued a statement on Thursday calling for its members to continue fighting Israel.
``The confrontations and the escalations will continue until the enemy recognizes all our rights (and) withdraws from Jerusalem and all the territories occupied in 1967,'' the statement said.
Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. It has in recent years turned over some 40 percent of the territory to the Palestinians, who want all of it for a future state.
Three earlier cease-fires in the last week intended to end the spasm of violence failed to hold, but an Israeli military official said the army was this time taking steps to avoid confrontations at the usual flashpoints.
``We understand that a visible force causes agitation, which we do not want,'' said Col. Yossi Adiri, commander of Israeli forces near the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city of Nablus, after meeting his Palestinian counterpart.
``At the same time, these forces will be prepared for any development in the field,'' Adiri told Israel Radio.
Of the 69 dead in a week of violence, 57 are Palestinians, nine Arab Israelis and the others are an Israeli soldier, a border guard and a Jewish civilian.
Barak flew home from Paris instead of going to Egypt as planned for further talks with Arafat and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who mediated in the Paris session.
Israeli cabinet minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who attended the talks in Paris, said Arafat had made a verbal commitment to Barak, Albright and French President Jacques Chirac to end the violence.
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