RAMALLAH, West Bank, 24 March — The Palestinian Authority yesterday accused Israel of trying to block a cease-fire deal to end almost 18 months of bloodshed by ignoring Palestinian demands that political issues be included as six more Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

“Israel wants to apply neither the Tenet plan nor the Mitchell recommendations,” Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters. “It wants only to arrive at a cease-fire without undertaking a (political) step. The Israelis want to be judges and decide alone,” Abed Rabbo said.

Senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials ended a US-hosted meeting on Friday without reaching a hoped-for truce, but agreed to talk again today. “No serious development has been registered until now” during the meetings, Abed Rabbo said.

The Palestinian head of public security in the Gaza Strip, Gen. Abdel Razaq Al-Majaida, said Israel insisted on an approach that was based solely on security and refused to discuss Palestinian political demands.

“We reject this way of going about the talks,” he told Al-Ayam newspaper, close to the Palestinian Authority, adding that US special peace envoy Anthony Zinni was “doing his best to obtain a cease-fire in the (coming) two days.”

Meanwhile, an official close to the Palestinian delegation said the “Palestinians do not expect much from the security talks because of Israel’s intransigence, and are not optimistic about an acceptance of their demands.”

There has been no comment yesterday from the Israeli side as to why there has been no breakthrough in the talks.

On Friday, Yarden Vatikai, an Israel Defense Ministry spokesman, said only that “we demanded above all that the Palestinian Authority makes all possible effort to stop the terrible wave of attacks.” That demand was echoed, yet again, by US President George W. Bush.

He has conditioned a meeting between Arafat and US Vice President Dick Cheney, in what would be the highest-level contact since Bush took office, on Arafat bringing a halt to attacks on Israel.

Bush said such a meeting “could happen, if and when Chairman Arafat performs, does what he’s supposed to do.”

He said Cheney and US Secretary of State Colin Powell had made the conditions for such a meeting clear to Arafat, on whom the US leader has repeatedly called to make a “100-percent effort” to halt attacks. Bush said he was awaiting an assessment of the situation from Zinni, who has begun a second week in the region in a bid to halt the bloodshed.

Israeli government spokesman Arieh Mekel told reporters yesterday that, “given the time factor, the coming 48 hours will be decisive to test the will of Yasser Arafat to halt violence, which he has done nothing about up until now.” Arab leaders hope Arafat will be able to attend next week’s Arab summit in Beirut.

But Abed Rabbo warned that the Palestinians “will not accept any decision taken at the summit which pertains to our rights and our cause, whatever the decision, if it is adopted without Palestine being represented and without Yasser Arafat’s presence.”

“A summit without President Arafat is an incomplete summit,” he said. “The entire world must know that the era of sponsoring Palestinians, even by brother countries, is over.”

Israeli terror continued yesterday, with six Palestinians being shot dead by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and Israeli Army tanks making raids into Palestinian autonomous territory in the southern Gaza Strip. The deaths bring to 1,577 the number of people killed since the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, erupted in September 2000, including 1,198 Palestinians and 355 Israelis.

Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinians near the Jewish settlement of Dugit in the Gaza Strip, an army statement said. The Hamas resistance group said the two men belonged to its armed wing.

A Palestinian teacher was killed when Israeli tanks fired a shell at the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza, Palestinian security sources and hospital officials said.

Before dawn, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in the Rafah refugee camp on Gaza’s border with Egypt, Palestinian security sources said. The army said troops had entered Rafah in search of tunnels used to smuggle arms. Palestinian sources said another Palestinian was killed by soldiers at a junction near a Jewish settlement in Gaza.