OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 24 August 2003 — Palestinian and Israeli officials, bracing for a new escalation in violence, looked yesterday to the United States to salvage a peace plan left in tatters by the collapse of a shaky truce.
Both sides launched appeals to Washington to stem the latest outbreak of bloodshed that has halted implementation of a US-sponsored peace road map aimed at establishing a Palestinian state by 2005.
The Americans stepped up their pressure on the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which it blames for the continued carnage, widening a freeze on the movement’s assets and targeting sources of support.
The United States also planned to dispatch senior officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, to the region to bolster ongoing talks by US chief peace monitor John Wolf.
Wolf met with Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat in the West Bank town of Jericho yesterday and heard a vigorous protest against the “assassinations of Palestinian leaders being carried out by Israel,” a senior Palestinian official said.
Israelis and Palestinians blame each other for the latest cycle of violence, capped this week by a bombing that killed 20 passengers on a Jerusalem bus and a retaliatory Israeli airstrike on a Hamas leader.
A relative calm settled on the region yesterday but both sides saw Washington as key to avoiding another spiral of tit-for-tat attacks.
“The whole situation is dependent on the Americans,” Nabil Abu Rudeina, a close aide of Yasser Arafat, said a day after the Palestinian leader chaired a new crisis meeting at his West Bank base in Ramallah.
“They should come out with a serious and decisive position to put an end to the Israeli escalation and violations,” Abu Rudeina said. “It is a very dangerous situation. The Americans need to intervene.”
The Palestinian Authority said late yesterday it had sealed three arms smuggling tunnels running between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and arrested some smugglers, in the first such action ever taken.
The three tunnels “used to smuggle arms and drugs” were closed, Palestinian security officials said. Nine illegal arms traders were arrested, they added.
The Palestinians also claimed their security services were continuing to put pressure on militant groups to halt attacks on Israeli targets despite the collapse of the truce.
“I summoned officials and militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and warned them that we will not tolerate attacks against Israel from our sector,” said Col. Majdi Al-Attari, Bethlehem preventive security commander.
Dov Weissglas, chief of staff for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, also urged US help at a meeting Friday with US envoys here and in a phone call with US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Israeli public radio said.
US officials have expressed alarm at the dramatic deterioration of the situation in the past two weeks after the truce declared on June 29 started out promisingly with a sharp reduction in the death toll.
Scrambling to find a formula for restoring peace they turned this week to Arafat, whom they had shunned for more than a year, and urged him to hand over control of all Palestinian security forces to Premier Mahmoud Abbas to fight the militants. A senior Palestinian official said that Arafat thought a new truce was possible if the Israelis formally recognized it, pulled out of occupied towns and ended their practice of “targeted killings” of militant leaders.
Armitage said Friday he would visit the Middle East next month to “touch base” with officials in several Arab nations, and a more senior US official might also travel to the region in the coming weeks.
He did not mention names but there has been speculation that either Secretary of State Colin Powell, Rice or both could make the trip.
President George W. Bush pledged Friday to stay personally involved in the peace process and announced a widening of the US campaign against Hamas, which with Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bombing.
“If people want there to be peace in the Middle East, if the Palestinians want to see their own state, they’ve got to dismantle the terrorist networks,” Bush said.
He said his government, which had previously frozen the assets of Hamas elements operating in the United States, would now target six senior Hamas officials abroad and five organizations accused of helping the group.
— Additional input from agencies
