OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 23 March — Senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials ended a meeting yesterday without reaching a hoped-for cease-fire, but with agreement to talk again over the weekend. The talks have kept truce negotiations on track despite a wave of bombings, the latest one yesterday.
“The meeting ended without an accord, but it was decided to hold another meeting Sunday,” Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Yarden Vatikai said. “During the meeting, we demanded above all that the Palestinian Authority makes all possible effort to stop the terrible wave of attacks,” he said.
The two sides had gone ahead with a meeting of their joint security high committee, canceled on Thursday evening after a bomber killed three Israelis and wounded 40 others in downtown Jerusalem. Israeli officials refrained from immediate reprisals but warned their new-found patience had limits.
An Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman said the talks resumed yesterday under the aegis of US envoy Anthony Zinni, who entered the second week of his efforts to halt the bloodshed, which has cost more than 1,560 lives. Palestinian sources said the session, the third this week, was held at the US ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv. It came after Zinni met with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
The week started with high hopes for a truce after Israel pulled its tanks out of autonomous Palestinian areas on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which they had occupied since late February. In a new incident yesterday, a Palestinian allegedly caught trying to sneak into Israel from the West Bank blew himself up at an army checkpoint and slightly wounded one officer, a military spokesman said. The incident was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah faction, which also claimed the attack in Jerusalem.
The other significant violence yesterday came when five Palestinians were wounded as Israeli forces raided a refugee camp near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and damaged 10 houses, security and medical sources said.
Israel also kept the political pressure up, with police detaining the Palestinian minister responsible for Jerusalem, Ziad Abu Ziad, in the annexed eastern part of the city. Ziad was “detained in the Ras El Amud neighborhood because he was not authorized to return to Jerusalem,” police spokesman Kofi Zirhan said. He was later released after being questioned by police.
Israeli officials, acting with what they called “contained rage,” vowed late Thursday to forego for the moment the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s usual policy of swift retaliation. But the Israelis said they would not stay idle indefinitely in the face of attacks aimed at sinking the peace process.
The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of pursuing its “aggression” and trying to sabotage Zinni’s efforts. They cited incursions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip which resulted in the death of a four-year-old girl and 20 arrests.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, speaking to reporters after Zinni met with Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah yesterday morning, said the US diplomat had “not put demands on the Palestinian side.”
Nabil Shaath, Palestinian minister for international coordination, sounded a defiant note, telling a radio station in Paris the intifada would continue as long as Israel occupied Palestinian territories. “The Israelis want to make us their cops, but the Palestinian Authority will not arrest anyone who fights against the Israeli occupation,” he said.
Meanwhile, thousands of Muslims in the Middle East demonstrated against Israel and the United States and in favor of the Palestinian uprising yesterday following the Friday prayers before next week’s key Arab summit.
About 3,000 people gathered in the Al-Azhar Mosque compound in the center of Cairo before being peacefully dispersed by police.
In Jordan, hundreds rallied outside a mosque in the northern city of Irbid chanting slogans of support for the uprising, the national news agency Petra reported. The protest was organized by Jordan’s opposition Muslim Brotherhood, the agency said.
In Lebanon, Palestinians and Lebanese urged Arab states to stand firm in their support for the intifada when they hold their summit in Beirut. In the southern port city of Sidon, 3,000 Lebanese and Palestinian Islamists rallied under tight security, calling for an Islamist Palestinian state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.
