The Palestinian leadership is demanding a clear timetable and framework for a United States-backed Middle East peace conference proposed for later this year, to prevent it from descending into an empty “festival” of ideas.
A Palestinian minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, warned this week that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was trying to undermine the conference by seeking to downgrade it to a talkshop, at which ideas would be exchanged, rather than a meeting that would hammer out a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement. The White House is drawing up plans for the international conference.
Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian Minister for Information and Culture and part of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat’s inner circle, was speaking at a debate in London. In a rare Palestinian-Israeli venture, he shared a platform with Yossi Beilin, the former Israeli justice minister and one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace plan.
The two are key members of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition, an ambitious attempt to maintain a bridge between the two communities. They are unable to meet in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza because of Israeli government restrictions.
The London meeting is the first between the two for three months because of the Israeli offensive into the West Bank that was accompanied by the worst violence since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
Abed Rabbo disclosed that he and Beilin are working together on a new peace plan. He expressed confidence that it would win the backing of Arafat and other Palestinians. But Beilin was more cautious. “We do not have a plan yet. We have the guidelines,” he said. “We do not have anything detailed yet.”
- Meanwhile Sharon convened top Cabinet ministers on Wednesday after six Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks, but government officials said they did not expect a dramatic change in Israel’s response — brief pinpoint incursions into West Bank towns.
Before daybreak on Thursday Israeli troops entered the West Bank city of Hebron from three directions, Palestinian security officials said. The force of three tanks, about 20 armoured personnel carriers and 20 jeeps left a few hours later, witnesses said.
Palestinian officials said the Israeli military arrested three people during the incursion, one of them a local leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas. It was not immediately clear who the other two were.
On Wednesday the Israelis staged a quick raid on Beitunia, a suburb of Ramallah, and were holding Bethlehem, surrounding villages and refugee camps for a fourth day, keeping residents in their homes as they searched for militants, explosives and weapons.
The Palestinian leadership issued a statement denouncing the Israeli incursions, which take place almost nightly, but although it has condemned attacks inside Israel, Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said that does not apply to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
“The Palestinian people have the complete right to resist the Israeli occupation and settlements in our land,” he said.