OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/CAIRO, 4 July — Israel’s mini-security Cabinet, at its special session yesterday, decided to continue the policy of assassinating Palestinians it says are masterminding attacks on Israelis, but will not change its overall policy toward the Palestinian Authority, which it defines as one of “restraint”.

According to the Israeli Haaretz daily, the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon slammed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during the mini-security Cabinet meeting, accusing him of not taking any measures to end what he termed was the “violence” against Israelis.

But Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday that it would be a “mistake” to “delegitimize” Arafat. Peres, who met the Palestinian president in Lisbon over the weekend, while both were attending a meeting of Socialist International, responded to extreme right-wing criticism of the parleys by saying he would resign from the wall-to-wall coalition if he could not act as he saw fit.

In Cairo, Arafat yesterday accused Israel of seeking to “crush the Palestinians” militarily and insisted he has kept his end of the bargain on restoring calm.

“The goal is to crush the Palestinians militarily,” Arafat told reporters citing tough talk from Sharon and his military aides Shaul Mofaz and Binyamin Ben Eliezer.

Arafat, who also met in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak, denounced the murder of “the leaders of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas as well as those of Fatah,” his own faction.

Arafat accused the Israelis of violating the cease-fire and commitments made during a tour of the region by CIA Director George Tenet on June 9. “The blockade was to have been lifted and punitive attacks, murders, and assassinations as well as crimes by settlers with the Israeli Army’s help and protection were to have stopped in two weeks,” in line with the commitments, he said.

“On the contrary, the attacks increased,” Arafat charged. “We are currently passing through a very dangerous phase.” Since the cease-fire took effect June 13, 15 Palestinians and nine Israelis have been killed.