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Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2001

The talks between the two leaders took place with a backdrop of continuing violence in the Middle East and warnings from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that the violence may be spiraling out of control.

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 52-year-old Palestinian farmer in the northern Gaza Strip, and gunmen attacked an Israeli car traveling near the border between the West Bank and Israel, critically injuring one passenger and wounding another.

Sabri Khader of the village of Bet Lahya was found dead near his farm Tuesday morning. Palestinian sources said Israeli soldiers stationed near the settlement of Dugit shot him several times in the neck.

The Israel Defense Forces spokesman said two bombs exploded near an armored personnel carrier, slightly injuring a soldier and leading to exchanges of gunfire.

Gunmen standing at a junction a short distance from a military checkpoint on a West Bank road linking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv shot at an Israeli car Tuesday night. A bullet struck the brain of a 30-year-old man, who was hospitalized in critical condition. Another bullet slightly injured a second passenger.

An Israeli soldier was seriously injured after a roadside bomb exploded near Kfar Darom, a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza, and two more soldiers were injured in Hebron, the IDF spokesman reported.

Barak said Tuesday he has reiterated orders to the army to prepare for a possible worsening of the unrest in Israel and the Palestinian-held West Bank.

He said Tuesday an agreement with the Palestinians is unlikely in the coming weeks.

Barak made the gloomy predictions in a telephone conversation with Clinton, several interviews on Israeli TV and radio stations, and in a briefing to the Israeli Parliament's (Knesset) prestigious Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "I don't think it is reasonable to reach an agreement [with the Palestinians] within a few weeks," he told the army's radio station.

"The probability that any agreement will be signed in the coming weeks is very low," he told Israel Radio.

Clinton has another three weeks in office and "it is not reasonable [to expect] an agreement in the last three days or week in office. A fortnight ago there was double the time, [but] since Arafat burnt most of that time dragging feet demanding and trying to get all sorts of clarification, we have very deep doubt about the seriousness of his intention to reach an agreement."

Barak was also reacting to several bombing attacks in Israeli cities and said "people connected with the Palestinian Authority" were connected with them.

"This is not the time for political contacts with the [Palestinian] Authority," he said, insisting Israel should now concentrate on vigorous counterterrorist operations.

The prime minister said that at the moment there are no contacts with the Palestinians, and he told Clinton he believed Arafat was trying to internationalize the conflict beyond the outgoing administration's term of office "by continuing to encourage terrorism," his spokesman reported.

Barak ordered the army to prepare for the possibility of a unilateral separation should that become necessary.

He told the Knesset committee that if there were no agreement, and no unilateral separation, Israel would face a Bosnia situation.

Barak has also ordered the army to prepare for a possible regional deterioration that might endanger Israel's peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. The deterioration could take a long time, he said. However, the absence of an agreement "significantly increases the danger of a regional deterioration and greatly increases the danger that Israel would be isolated in the world."

Concerned about the effect of talk of war, he said nothing happened in the past weekend that increases its likelihood, and his directive was merely a "strategic warning," since the danger of a deterioration to an overall war is greater than it has been in the past three to four years. Yet this means allocating more budgets for defense and more training for soldiers, he said. Barak insisted he still wanted an agreement to prevent more graves in military cemeteries and more disasters in Israel's cities.

"There is no solution for this dispute but through diplomatic negotiations, and these diplomatic negotiations must be carried out not at any price, not at the cost of our vital interests," he said.

There should be no deadline, Israel should not forego its objection to the return of Palestinian refugees to its territory, nor "will I transfer sovereignty over the Temple Mount in any document to the other side," he said.

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the site of the first and second Jewish temples and the Mosque of al-Aksa. Its future and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the refugee issue seem to be the major hurdles to an agreement.

In the telephone conversation with Clinton, before Arafat's arrival, Barak said that if Israeli representatives were invited to Washington, "against a background of a halt to the violence and the resumption of meaningful cooperation in the war against terrorism, we would consider the idea," his spokesman reported.

White House officials said Clinton invited Arafat to Washington to answer his questions about the peace plan Clinton offered to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at a Dec. 23 White House negotiating session.

White House spokesman Jake Siewert said the meeting between Clinton and Arafat is intended to forge "a common understanding about the parameters of the discussions."

Siewert explained that Clinton believes any additional peace talks must go on within the boundaries of the proposals Clinton laid out Dec. 23.

While the White House has not publicly discussed those plans, they are generally believed to require Arafat to give up his long-standing demand for a right for all Palestinian refugees to return to territory now within Israel. In exchange, a new Palestinian state would be granted jurisdiction over the area around the Temple Mount – a holy site for both Muslims and Jews – and over Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Last week Arafat sent letters to the Clinton administration outlining over 20 separate areas for which he would need clarification in order to proceed with negotiations.

According to Clinton spokesman P.J. Crowley, Clinton and Arafat met with a group of aides for about 10 minutes, narrowed the discussions to themselves and four others for about 90 minutes and then spoke one-on-one with only a translator present for another half-hour.

It was "a serious discussion," Crowley said. Clinton "strongly condemned the acts of terror that we have seen in recent days and [the leaders] talked about steps that can be taken to continue to counteract these acts of terror," Crowley said.

In addition, Crowley said, "They did talk about parameters that the president put forward. ... They also talked obviously about the questions the chairman and the Palestinians have about those parameters."

The talks broke up at about 5 p.m. EST, so that Clinton could attend previously scheduled receptions in honor of his wife, who this week will be sworn in as the new U.S. senator from New York. Arafat agreed to return to the White House at 9:30 p.m. to reconvene the talks. Arafat refused to comment on the talks as he departed the White House for the recess.

Israel has closed down the Gaza Strip and all its border terminals, as well as airport, commercial passages and crossing points. It also revoked special privileges given to Palestinian VIPs. The move followed Monday's car bomb in Netanya, which critically injured one person – possibly the bomber – and injured dozens of others.

More than 350 Palestinians and more than 40 Israelis have been killed during the past three months, one of the most violent periods of confrontation since the signing of the historic Oslo peace agreement in 1993.

Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rudeineh told reporters that the Palestinian leader and Clinton will discuss proposals made by the United States a week ago for an Israeli-Palestinian permanent-status agreement. However, a senior Palestinian official, who asked to remain anonymous, said Arafat agreed to meet with Clinton only to discuss the proposals and to get answers to 25 questions that Palestinian negotiators had.

Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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