OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 13 October — Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon will not allow his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to hold more meetings with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, the Israeli Ha’aretz daily reported yesterday. “Peres’ meetings with Arafat have only caused damage. I will not let him meet with him again,” the daily quoted Sharon as saying at a political meeting.
Ha’aretz said tensions were rising between the dovish Peres and the hard-line Israeli prime minister.
Peres was increasingly concerned that Sharon was leading Israel to a dangerous “political freeze” while Sharon was becoming increasingly critical of the foreign minister’s contacts with Arafat, the paper said. Sharon felt that, after each meeting between Peres and Arafat, there had been a dramatic rise in attacks on Israeli targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the report added.
Peres and Arafat last met a little over two weeks ago at Gaza International Airport to talk about a truce — called shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington — aimed at ending more than one year of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations.Radio reports said Peres demanded steps to ease Israeli pressure on the Palestinian Authority in a working meeting with Sharon Thursday night.
Peres yesterday met with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat and parliamentary speaker Ahmed Qorei in a bid to rekindle a battered cease-fire agreement, a senior Palestinian official told AFP.
In the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army and Palestinian activists exchanged fire yesterday near the Jewish settlement of Rafah Yam, an army spokeswoman said.
A Palestinian man and woman were also seriously injured early yesterday when Israeli troops opened fire on a neighborhood in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, Palestinian security sources said.
Israeli tanks launched two incursions into a Palestinian-controlled area south of Gaza City. The army also shelled and destroyed a well in Zara City, south of the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.
The army had launched a separate raid several hundred meters into the Zara City district overnight, opening fire and injuring a boy inside his home, security sources said.
In Ramallah, thousands of Palestinians marched peacefully through West Bank cities after Friday prayers to protest against the United States and its strikes against Afghanistan, AFP correspondents said.
In Nablus, some 2,000 people gathered and carried banners and Palestinian flags, including ones calling the United States “the head of terrorism in the world.”
