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TEL AVIV, March 17: US envoy Anthony Zinni vowed to press ahead with a ceasefire mission clouded on Sunday by a Palestinian shooting in Israel, a suicide bombing in Al-Quds and fighting in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
Hours after the violence erupted, Zinni began talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Ramallah in the West Bank and issued a statement through the US Embassy in Tel Aviv condemning “today’s terror attacks against the Israeli people”.
“These attacks will not deter my efforts to continue to work with both sides to bring the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation to an end,” Zinni said in the statement.
“At the same time, it is critical that the Palestinian Authority take responsibility and act against terror and punish those responsible.”
US Vice President Dick Cheney, on a Middle East tour ahead of Washington’s next moves in its global anti-terror war, said in Bahrain he hoped the former Marine Corps general’s mission would yield a result by the time he landed in Israel on Monday.
In the first such attack since Zinni arrived in the region on Thursday, a Palestinian gunman killed a young woman and wounded 15 other people near a high school on a main street in Kfar Saba, a central Israeli town close to the West Bank.
An armed Israeli truck driver and two policemen shot the gunman dead.
Two hours later, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a bus stop at the French Hill junction of north Jerusalem.
Police said the bomber was killed and one woman wounded in the blast, which shattered the windows of a minibus in a section of Jerusalem occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. The Islamic Jihad, in a statement faxed to Reuters in Beirut, claimed responsibility for the blast. There was no immediate claim for the Kfar Saba attack.
Reuters journalists witnessed heavy exchanges of fire in the Palestinian-ruled West Bank town of Bethlehem, where Israeli tanks moved towards the centre. Palestinian medics said one Palestinian had been killed in the fighting.
CHALLENGE FOR ENVOY: “We are engaged in a difficult struggle for Israel’s security,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a speech after the latest violence. “We seek peace and our first goal is a ceasefire. But the vicious Palestinian terror continues.”
He gave no indication in his comments whether Israel would strike back for Sunday’s attacks, but in an earlier statement after the weekly cabinet meeting, Sharon said: “Israel will have to respond in the event of terrorist incidents.”
A key sticking point in Zinni’s efforts has been a pullout of Israeli forces from all Palestinian-ruled territory, including Bethlehem.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said on Sunday the army would withdraw as soon as the Palestinians provided security assurances that the territory would not be used to launch attacks on Israelis.
Palestinian officials again insisted they would not enter talks on a truce before an Israeli pullout and questioned the sense of Zinni’s mission unless there was also a return to negotiations on a political settlement.
“If they do not withdraw completely from all Palestinian-ruled areas and do not give the Palestinian people hope for a political vision, then Israel is intent on pursuing its aggression,” said Mohammed Dahlan, Palestinian preventive security chief.
FAMILIAR PATTERN: The latest Palestinian attacks followed a pattern familiar to Israelis who have found almost no corner of their country to be safe.
“First I heard shots and then I went forward, and I saw a guard of some sort chasing the terrorist, who had a pistol,” a woman told Israeli Channel Two television from Kfar Saba.
“He didn’t manage to get him in time, and the terrorist went into a shop and opened fire and I saw another two people fall.”
At the Jerusalem intersection where the suicide bomber struck, police chief Mickey Levy told reporters: “A terrorist ran towards a bus and cars stopped at a red light and blew himself up. Eight people were treated for shock and one woman was slightly hurt by shattered glass. It could have been much worse.”—Reuters
