OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 31 May — Israeli tanks and troops pulled out of Bethlehem but raided two other Palestinian-ruled cities yesterday, as US and European Union envoys pursued efforts to revive moribund Middle East peace talks. The army’s withdrawal from Bethlehem, three days after seizing parts of the town, coincided with a new coordinated international effort to staunch 20 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
“There has been too much suffering and too much death for both Palestinians and Israelis,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns said after meeting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Ramallah in the West Bank. “It is time to restore a sense of hope,” he told reporters. But there was no letup to the violence yesterday.
Senior US and European officials headed for the strife-torn Middle East yesterday to push for renewed peace efforts. Their efforts will be bolstered today by the arrival of CIA Director George Tenet. He visited Israel a year ago to work out a cease-fire plan that never took hold. Tenet arrives in Israel on Monday for security talks with both sides, US officials said.
Burns said that the international community, as well as Israel and the Palestinians, face a tough task in restoring hopes to the troubled region. “It is not possible to achieve lasting progress, real progress in security, without a sense of political hope, and it’s not possible to make political progress without security,” said Burns.
Burns arrived in Ramallah from Cairo, where he held talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and warned that the Palestinians’ conditions were worsening rapidly. “The humanitarian problem, the daily humiliations that ordinary Palestinians suffer under occupation are getting worse every day,” he said in the Egyptian capital.
Burns met with Arafat, who went on to hold discussions with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. Fischer later described the situation in the Middle East as “terrible” and called for renewed political talks to tackle the crisis. Fischer said: “The situation is terrible, we see the suffering of the people, we hear the moaning of the families of the innocent victims on both sides. This situation must be changed. Diplomacy, negotiations, and peace must have the upper hand.”
The Israeli Army captured a dozen activists and injured as many civilians as its forces raided autonomous regions across the West Bank while keeping the population cooped up in their towns. In what have become daily swoops across the region, Israeli troops seized several suspects in Jenin in the north, Hebron in the south and near Tulkarm in the west.
In Ramallah, all but one checkpoint were sealed by the army amid fears of bombers heading south on the road to Jerusalem, just a few kilometers away. Israeli tanks and jeeps moved into Jenin, with troops checking vehicles and searching houses, Palestinian security officials said. A curfew was slapped on the town, where a Palestinian civilian was shot dead in a raid Tuesday.
Palestinians said 15 people were wounded by Israeli gunfire, including an 11-year-old, in the southern Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt.
