TEL AVIV, Feb 28: Violence exploded in the Middle East on Thursday, with 12 Palestinians and an Israeli killed, overshadowing a new round of joint security talks and dashing hopes raised by a Saudi peace initiative.
As the Palestinian intifada entered its 18th month, six Palestinian police officers and a 64-year-old civilian were killed in gunbattles during an Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp, in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said.
An Israeli soldier and four Palestinians were also killed in fighting in the Balata camp near Nablus, which also left 135 Palestinians injured, Israeli military and Palestinian hospital sources said.
Security sources on both sides said the army had full control over the camp without occupying it completely.
The violence came as Palestinian and Israeli security officials held new talks aimed at defusing tensions, after the Palestinians delayed them by two hours to protest the latest deadly Israeli operations, officials said.
No statement was issued after the meeting ended.
The meeting began in the presence of US officials at the Erez crossing on the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, the Palestinian officials said.
The Palestinian delegation intended to denounce the latest Israeli military actions, they added, as the Palestinian radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened to open “new fronts”, including “outside Palestine”.
The group, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, made the threat in a statement sent to news agencies.
The Palestinian leadership was also defiant, accusing Israel of opting for military force over negotiations but vowing its people would resist all attempts to subjugate them.
And Marwan Barghuti, Fatah’s West Bank chief, warned of retaliation for the army’s “massacre” in the West Bank refugee camps of Balata and Jenin.
“We warn Israel that if it does not withdraw its forces in the next few hours, the Palestinian side will retaliate against Israelis everywhere in the occupied territories,” he added.
The unrest spread to the Bethlehem area later in the day, as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said it fired four mortar shells on the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo.
The attack prompted helicopter gunships to open fire on the village of Beit Jala, from where the mortar bombs were fired, and on the nearby refugee camp of Aida. Palestinian police also reported shooting in Al Khalil, further south in the West Bank.
DIPLOMACY: On the diplomatic front, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in Cairo he will go to Washington on Monday and Tuesday for talks on the Middle East, following a visit to Jeddah centred on the Saudi peace initiative.
Solana, speaking after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz had told him he wanted to make his peace plan an “initiative of the Arab world”, to be endorsed at the Arab summit to be held in Beirut in four weeks.
The European Union supported this idea, Solana said, adding, “we hope very much that this will contribute to bringing peace in the region”.
Solana also said it was his “wish” that Arafat, currently blockaded by Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Ramallah, be present at the Arab League summit in Beirut.
Still vague in detail, the initiative foresees the Arab world normalizing ties with Israel in return for Israel withdrawing from Arab territory captured in the 1967 war.—AFP
