OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/ PARIS, 6 July — The Palestinian Cabinet announced yesterday a political initiative marking the end of a weeklong test period of calm which Israel said never began.
In a bloody backdrop to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s first official visit to Europe, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian and critically wounded another in the West Bank in violence that put more strain on a fragile US-brokered cease-fire.
In Berlin, the first stop on a trip that also took Sharon to Paris, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged the Israeli leader to show “more flexibility” on Jewish settlements built on occupied land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
France called on Sharon to stop undermining Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom the Israeli leader has publicly branded “a murderer and a pathological liar”.
In what it described as a new political initiative to restore peace, the Palestinian Cabinet called for the immediate appointment of international observers for the West Bank and Gaza. It also proposed that both sides make a commitment to implement a US-backed multi-tiered peace plan, sketched by a committee led by former US Sen. George Mitchell, as a single package within a short time-frame. Israel has said it is opposed to foreign observers and wants the Mitchell plan implemented step-by-step and only after complete calm is restored with the Palestinians. The committee’s blueprint calls for an immediate end to hostilities, followed by a cooling-off period and confidence-building measures that include a halt to building Jewish settlements and an eventual resumption of peace talks.
“The political initiative is based on the concern to protect the peace process and to pave the way for serious, peaceful negotiations,” the Cabinet said in the statement, issued after its weekly meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
“We call on the Israeli government to respond positively to this political initiative.” The Cabinet made the proposals after what it said was the end of a seven-day test period of quiet brokered by US Secretary of State Colin Powell leading to implementation of the Mitchell plan.
Israel has said the countdown never began because violence has continued. The Palestinian Cabinet said both sides should “re-emphasize their commitment to an immediate cessation of all sorts of fire, attacks or (cease-fire) violations”. In Paris, a spokeswoman for President Jacques Chirac quoted him as telling Sharon in their talks that “weakening the President of the Palestinian Authority would be counterproductive”.
