OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 11 February — The Palestinian Authority yesterday cheered an EU call for Middle East peace-making to focus more on political reconciliation than security while Israelis said it was out of touch with reality. The European Union statement, at the end of a two-day foreign ministers meeting in Spain on Saturday, differed from the Israeli and US position that almost 17 months of violence should end before peace talk resume.
The hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came home from Washington yesterday after failing to secure the US boycott of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat he was seeking, but US support for his isolation of the Palestinian leader has driven a wedge between the United States and Europe.
The European Union is also being kept on the sidelines, with ideas raised by European foreign ministers for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ending more than 16 months of violence being swiftly dismissed by Washington. “It is very important that we go back to putting politics in the center of our discussions on the Middle East,” said Josep Pique, foreign minister of current EU president Spain.
“We should advance toward the search for a political solution which cannot be accompanied by 100 percent of absolute security,” he said. Ministers also criticized Israeli confinement of Arafat to the West Bank city of Ramallah since a spate of militant attacks in December.
Arafat spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina called the EU statement “a positive step in support of the peace process.” “It brings down all the Israeli goals of destroying the peace process... It is a message to the Israelis and Americans that they return to a search for peace in the region.”
Meanwhile, two Palestinian gunmen killed two people when they sprayed gunfire at a cafe near an army base in southern Israel yesterday before they were shot dead by soldiers, Israeli police and witnesses said. The attack in Beersheba, in which up to 18 people were wounded, happened just ahead of Sharon’s return to Israel.
Israeli officials blamed Arafat for the fresh attack, for which there was no immediate claim of responsibility. An official from the Hamas resistance group called the shooting a “natural reaction” to Israeli military operations but did not say who carried out the attack.
Witnesses said two gunmen, wearing civilian clothes, drove up near the base and opened fire about one block from the military’s southern command center at a cafe frequented by soldiers. Police later detonated an explosive belt found on one of the attackers.
Just hours before the attack, Israeli troops raided two areas in the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city of Nablus, attacking Palestinians and arresting three militants. Israeli forces also entered a Palestinian agricultural area south of Deir Al-Balah in the Gaza Strip earlier in the day, taking over two homes and conducting searches, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
