OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 23 June — Jewish settlers ran riot against Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, blocking traffic, burning crops and beating up journalists, Palestinian witnesses said.
Also yesterday, a Palestinian suicide bomber in a jeep killed two Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip, as US and European envoys battled to shore up a shaky Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire. As the world community rallied to back the nine-day truce in hopes of ending months of bloodshed in which nearly 600 have died, the scale of the task was starkly underlined once again.
The settlers, furious at the Israeli government’s continued restraint after the killing of three settlers since Monday despite a cease-fire, brandished placards calling on the authorities to act.
The incidents happened near Ramallah, in the northern West Bank, where some 100 armed settlers blocked roads and burned fields, east of Bethlehem, where Palestinian cars were stoned, and in the Hebron area, where two Palestinian journalists were beaten, the witnesses said.
In Nablus, in the northern West Bank, settlers set fire to olive trees, then set upon a car belonging to the fire department and attacked its driver, a local official said. Israeli Army radio said troops had arrested two settlers near Ramallah and confiscated their weapons.
Meanwhile, the opposition Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement calling for the formation of “self-defense committees” in occupied territories and demanding that the Palestinian Authority “provide arms in order to oppose the aggression of the settlers.”
The Israeli Army said the bomber blew himself up on a road the soldiers were patrolling near the Jewish settlement of Dugit. A spokeswoman said a Palestinian woman on the roof of a house had signaled to the soldiers that a jeep parked in the mud needed help. As they approached, the bomber set off his explosives, killing two soldiers and slightly wounding a third. But Palestinian security sources said the deaths were the result of a fumbled Israeli training exercise taking place in an area under Israeli security control.
On the diplomatic front, just a week after a visit by UN chief Kofi Annan to the region, US and European officials forged ahead yesterday with their drive to make the shaky cease-fire stick. US special envoy William Burns and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana met leaders separately in Jerusalem.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell is due in the region next week to throw his weight behind the truce, threatened by the continuing violence. The diplomats urged the sides to ignore provocations and stick with the truce brokered on June 13 by US CIA Director George Tenet.
After meeting the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Solana held talks in Ramallah with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Burns was due in Ramallah today. Earlier yesterday, Solana and Burns had met separately in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters in Ramallah that Solana, in his talks with Arafat, had “stressed ... the need to continue to carry out all the Palestinian obligations of the Tenet understanding.”
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad has said the Mitchell report on ending the Palestinian uprising is unbalanced and US initiatives to implement it may be aimed only at reaching a cease-fire rather than resolving the larger issues. Assad, in an interview for today’s edition of the Paris daily Le Figaro, said the report from a commission led by former US Sen. George Mitchell conflicted with United Nations Security Council resolutions on the Palestinian territories.
