OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 10 July — Israel and the Palestinians agreed yesterday to a series of meetings after breaking the ice at their first high-level talks in months despite the murder of a prominent member of Islamic Jihad by Israeli troops.
Both sides said two days of meetings between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian officials, including new Interior Minister Abdel Razzak Al-Yahiya, were not peace negotiations and they brought no major breakthroughs.
Peres said his talks with the new Palestinian interior minister were “good,” while chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said a new and larger meeting was to be held in the coming days.
“We talked about everything. The Palestinian side asked the Israelis to withdraw from Palestinian cities and territories and finish the siege and closure, stop settlement activities and the aggressive policy of killing, assassinations and siege.
“The Israeli side talked about security issues,” said Erekat, who accompanied the new interior minister.
In other developments US President George W. Bush discussed efforts to end violence in the Middle East by telephone yesterday with Prince Abdullah, the regent, the White House said.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal earlier deemed “positive” Bush’s comment that progress was being made toward reforms in the Palestinian Authority, a US pre-condition for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In the north of West Bank, a special unit of the Israeli Army killed a leading member of Islamic Jihad before dawn yesterday.
Moammar Daraghme, 30, was killed in an ambush in the Palestinian village of Yamun, 10 km from Jenin, the group said.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical and security sources said two Palestinians were wounded, one seriously, by Israeli gunfire when troops entered the refugee camp at Rafah, near the Egyptian border.
A Palestinian policeman was also arrested, four houses destroyed and three damaged in the midnight raid by troops in armored vehicles, including tanks, personnel carriers and bulldozers, security sources said.
Israeli police yesterday closed the administrative offices of the Palestinian Al-Quds university in occupied east Jerusalem, headed by Sari Nusseibeh, the PLO’s pointman for the disputed city, police said.
Police officers drove off with documents and computers seized from the offices and changed the locks, said an AFP correspondent at the scene.
The Israeli Knesset yesterday passed a bill which would exclude government ministers from their parliamentary privilege if they express any statement against Israel, Israel Army radio reported.
A Palestinian deputy and member of Arafat’s Fatah movement slammed the veteran Palestinian leader’s reforms as “nonsense” and said Arafat was leading the Palestinians “to hell,” in remarks broadcast yesterday.
