Clinton "Peace in our time" a Legacy the LIBS will say didn't happen
on their watch.
Saturday December 30 4:42 PM ET
Embattled Barak Tells Israelis: It's Me or War
By Danielle Haas
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime minister Ehud Barak warned Israelis on Saturday they would face war if his hawkish rival Ariel Sharon won looming elections, while Palestinian groups urged an intensified uprising against Israeli occupation.
A combative Barak said he would triumph over Sharon despite polls that suggest the conservative Likud party leader would trounce him in a special February 6 prime ministerial ballot.
``I will win this election,'' he told Russian state television in a pre-recorded interview. ``The real choice is Barak and war. I don't want to put Sharon off peace, but (it's) Barak or war.''
Sharon has said that if elected he would seek a long-term peace deal with the Palestinians to be implemented over several years, rather than try to resolve the conflict's most sensitive issues now such as Jerusalem's status, as Barak has tried to do.
Sporadic violence, meanwhile, rumbled on in the West Bank and Gaza, casting another layer of gloom over efforts to revive peace talks and end three months of bloodshed in which at least 346 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed.
Voice of Palestine radio reported that two people had been wounded in sporadic clashes in the West Bank on Saturday. Israel's army reported a single incident near the West Bank town of Hebron in which Palestinians burned tyres.
In the north, witnesses said Israeli soldiers had shot dead a Lebanese man at the border between the two countries, a favored spot for Lebanese to throw rocks at the Israeli army in a show of support for the Palestinian uprising.
They said the man had been shot as he walked along a road near the Fatma Gate. An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers had shot the man as he tried to breach the border.
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza for the funeral of policeman Mahmoud Naseer, killed on Friday in a battle involving Israeli tank fire near the Israel-Gaza border.
``Let us teach them how to kill the Jews,'' they chanted.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction called for an escalation in a three-month-old Intifada (uprising) to mark the 36th anniversary of the group's foundation and usher in 2001 as the year of Palestinian independence.
Contacts Continue, Little Progress
Fatah is the largest and most influential Palestinian faction that rules the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also forms the backbone of the Palestinian Authority.
``Continuing the Intifada is the only choice capable of achieving independence and sweeping occupation,'' it said.
The Israeli-Palestinian peace drive stumbled again on Friday when the two sides staked out opposing positions over the right of return for Palestinian refugees and control over Jerusalem.
Barak said he would not sign a deal agreeing to the right of Palestinian refugee return or Palestinian sovereignty over the Jerusalem holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Arabs as al-Haram al-Sharif.
The Palestinian cabinet said after a weekly meeting that it would not agree to a settlement that failed to meet fully its core demands, but that it was still committed to ``full and serious negotiations under international sponsorship.''
Amid private contacts between Israelis and Palestinians, Western diplomats warned of a stand-off between the Palestinians and the United States over the details of the U.S. proposals.
Palestinians say they want more information before agreeing to use the plans as a blueprint for a settlement, and that they will only give their verdict after they get clarifications.
Arafat In Tunis For Talks
Arafat arrived in Tunis on Saturday night for talks with Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on U.S. proposals. Officials said Arafat would meet Ben Ali on Sunday to discuss ideas put forward by Clinton at the close of five days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials in Washington.
Arafat, who made no comment to waiting reporters in Tunis, has said an Arab summit follow-up committee will meet on Monday to discuss the U.S. blueprint.
Arafat has had frequent consultations with Ben Ali on the Middle East peace process. Tunisia severed its low-level diplomatic ties with Israel in October to protest Israeli violence against Palestinians.
Palestinian officials said that recent meetings between Israeli minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Korei in New York had resulted in no progress.
Marking a new channel in talks, a senior Palestinian official said Palestinian delegates were due to hold talks in coming days with U.S. officials in Washington on Clinton's plan.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he would visit Amman on Sunday for talks with Jordanian officials.
Fatah's call for militancy was echoed in Damascus, where the radical Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine urged Arafat to give arms to all Palestinians to fight Israel.
Hundreds of students from the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups on Saturday burned pictures of Israeli leaders in a rally in Nablus in the West Bank held to commemorate a suicide bomber who wounded three Israelis in an attack on December 22.
Witnesses said the Israeli army sealed off the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza on Saturday as it tightened its closure on Palestinian areas, imposed in the wake of the two bomb attacks on Thursday in which two Israelis were killed. |
