JERUSALEM, 8 March 2005 — Israeli and Palestinian ministers met yesterday in the latest in a series of top-level talks since last month’s landmark peace summit but clashes in the West Bank again clouded an informal cease-fire.
Amid moves to break the ice since contacts were frozen after a bombing in Tel Aviv 10 days ago, Israeli Interior Minister Ophir Pines and Palestinian Interior Minister Nasr Yusef began talks in Jerusalem.
It was the first meeting between the two ministers following Yusef’s appointment to the Cabinet last month as the sole man in charge of the sprawling Palestinian security apparatus.
On Sunday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and top Ariel Sharon aide Dov Weisglass re-activated Israeli-Palestinian committees tasked with studying promises made at last month’s Middle East summit in Egypt.
Charged with an expected transfer of security control within the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, prisoner releases and Palestinians wanted by Israel, the committees are to meet within “days”, a Palestinian official said.
Such contacts will pave the way for a crucial meeting between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz today — the highest-level contacts between the two sides since the summit in Sharm El-Sheikh.
The Abbas-Mofaz talks would “relaunch the peace process, press the Palestinian Authority to battle against terrorism, and discuss a transfer of authority in the towns” of the West Bank,” an Israeli security source said.
Israel had been due to hand over security control of Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah, Qalqilya and Tulkarm as part of confidence-building measures, but the moves were frozen in the wake of the Tel Aviv bombing.
Sharon and Abbas declared a mutual end to hostilities early last month in Egypt after more than four years of violence.
Both leaders are to meet US President George W. Bush — who has declared peace in the Middle East a new priority in his second term in office — at the White House in coming weeks.
A Palestinian official has said Abbas will meet Bush at the end of the month - the first time a president of the Palestinian Authority has been invited to Washington since Bush took office in 2001.
Sharon’s office has said the Israeli premier would travel there in April. Amid tentative optimism of a breakthrough on the peace process, two Israeli soldiers were wounded in clashes with Palestinians in the southern West Bank town of Hebron, witnesses and Israeli military sources said.
“Two soldiers were wounded when Palestinians opened fire with automatic machine guns on an army and border guard position near the Tomb of the Patriarchs,” the source said. The two victims were transferred to a hospital, where one of them was said to be in a serious condition.
A Hamas spokesman said early yesterday that the movement has serious intentions to join the executive committee of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) if reforms are made.
Musheer Al-Masri revealed to reporters in Gaza that there are contacts between the PLO leadership and the movement to include Hamas in the PLO, which now consists of eight different armed and political factions.
