HEBRON, West Bank, 16 August — Undercover Israeli soldiers shot dead a member of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction yesterday amid an international push for peace talks.
Russia and the United States urged both sides to reopen a channel of dialogue in hope of ending more than 10 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.
Palestinian activist Imad Abu Sneineh was shot in the head, chest, stomach and legs by 10 bullets fired from a truck with Palestinian number plates outside his home in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian officials said.
Israeli security sources said the killing was carried out by undercover soldiers and described Abu Sneineh as a prominent activist.
“This is a policy of war, a policy of aggression, a policy of escalation. This is not a policy of peace,” Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Shaath told Reuters in an interview. Sharon “is giving the orders (which) makes him criminally responsible for these decisions to kill people”, Shaath said.
Palestinians accuse Israel of assassinating about 60 people since they began an uprising against Israeli occupation last September. Israel calls it self-defense.
Tensions remained high in the West Bank after Israeli tanks and armored vehicles had taken up positions on Tuesday night close to the town of Bethlehem and the nearby village of Beit Jala, just south of Jerusalem.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he had called off a raid on Beit Jala for now. But the threat of a raid still hung over Beit Jala, a Palestinian-ruled village.
Yesterday, Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks entered a residential area near the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, only to pull out without incident. An Israeli military source said a tank and an armored personnel carrier entered the area to conduct a search.
Arafat called yesterday for an emergency session of Arab foreign ministers, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said in Cairo. Arafat made his appeal during a meeting with Moussa, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdulilah Al-Khatib over how to respond to the violence.
Moussa did not say when the emergency meeting would take place at the Cairo-based Arab League, but indicated it could be in the next few days.
Earlier yesterday, Arafat and Arab information ministers agreed a plan to spend $1 million to improve the Palestinians’ media image.
In Jeddah, Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ali, president of the Islamic Development Bank, said Saudi Arabia has given $210 million of $300 million it promised to the two funds supporting the Palestinian intifada. The bank is supervising the $1 billion fund. He said the Kingdom had given $40 million while the United Arab Emirates had paid $14.5 million in their latest installments.
Meanwhile, the United States hinted yesterday that it would once again use its veto to block any attempt by the UN Security Council to intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The statement represented a rebuff to the Palestinians, who have called for the United Nations to impose an international monitoring force and to condemn Israel for its occupation last week of Orient House, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s headquarters in East Jerusalem.
Israel’s Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau said Orient House will not be reopened until guarantees are given that it will not be used for “illegal activities”. “We shall not let it reopen until we can make sure that no illegal activities will take place in the premises,” he told reporters. He said the closure order was valid for six months, adding that “if necessary, I will extend it for one additional half-year” period.
