GAZA, 31 January — A Palestinian injured two Israeli secret service agents when he blew himself up yesterday as Israel offered to resume peace talks with Syria if Damascus stopped supporting Hezbollah resistance fighters in Lebanon.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during their two hours of talks at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh to make every effort to pressure Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to stop the 16-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
It took place against a backdrop of fresh violence.
The Palestinian bomber lightly wounded two agents of Israel’s Shin Bet security service in an attack claimed by both the Fatah and Islamic Jihad groups.
A Fatah official said the bomber, who was killed in the blast, had worked for Israeli intelligence but had turned on his handlers to carry out his "national duty". Shin Bet has been at the forefront of a campaign to assassinate Palestinian activists since the uprising began.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah, yesterday identified the first Palestinian female bomber as Wafa Idris, 26, from the Al-Amari refugee camp" in Ramallah. Wafa blew herself up in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing a pedestrian and injuring scores of others.
Wafa, a former volunteer paramedic for the Red Crescent Ambulance service, was a divorcee with no children. She went missing Sunday morning, hours before the blast.
Israeli tanks firing heavy machine guns made a brief incursion into Tulkarm, witnesses said.
At Sharm El-Sheikh, Mubarak said there was no alternative to Arafat, and that he believed he would help quell the violence. Ben-Eliezer said he had given Mubarak a message for Syrian President Bashar Assad spelling out Israel’s readiness to resume peace talks with its long-time foe if Damascus stopped supporting the Hezbollah.
A hawkish member of the left-wing Labor party, Ben-Eliezer is the most senior Israeli to visit Egypt since Foreign Minister Shimon Peres went to Cairo in July 2001. Labor is the junior partner in a coalition with the right-wing Likud.
