The United States envoy to the Middle East, William Burns, is expected to arrive in Jerusalem on Wednesday to discuss an appeal by the new Palestinian leadership for the United States’s support in securing Israeli respect for a ceasefire.
Burns is due to meet the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Thursday.
Abbas has spent the past week in talks with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have agreed to suspend attacks on Israeli targets while he seeks international guarantees for a permanent ceasefire.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has said he will respond to ”quiet with quiet”, but the armed Islamist groups want his guarantee that Israel will stop killing and arresting of militants and attacking Palestinian areas.
Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, has said he is close to an agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad which will draw them into the political process and bring an end to their war on Israel.
The Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, spoke to Abbas on Monday. A statement said they talked about the importance of working together for peace.
But some Israeli leaders have raised objections to the ceasefire plan.
The Finance Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said on Monday that that the Palestinian leadership should not negotiate with Hamas or Islamic Jihad but meet Israel’s insistence that he should disarm and dismantle them.
”If Abu Mazen and his government begin dismantling the terror organisations, confiscate their weapons, and stop the poisonous incitement against Israel, then we’ll know we are in the right direction,” he said.
”These elements must be dismantled. It’s clear as the sun. It is a fundamental demand of Israel,” he told Israeli Army Radio.
The Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, echoed the demand, saying that negotiations with the Palestinians could not resume until Abbas eliminated Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Netanyahu also said that Israel should not make any concessions to the new Palestinian leadership in response to a ceasefire.
”I do not believe that Israel must give something,” he told Army Radio. ”[The Palestinians] must give something.
”They are the side that transgressed. They are the side that tried with the force of terror to advance the terrible results that they sought.”
Netanyahu was also reluctant to follow the example of other cabinet ministers, including the Labour party leader Shimon Peres, in praising Mr Abbas.
”First, I would prefer to see results,” he said. ”A truce can be an opening for a positive development, or a time-out between two offensives of terrorism.” – Guardian Unlimited Â