RAMALLAH, March 23: The Palestinians accused Israel on Saturday of wanting to block a ceasefire deal to end almost 18 months of bloodshed by ignoring Palestinian demands that political issues be included, as six more Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

“Israel wants to apply neither the Tenet plan nor the Mitchell recommendations,” Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said.

“It wants only to arrive at a ceasefire without undertaking a (political) step. The Israelis want to be judges and decide alone,” Abed Rabbo said.

Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials ended a US-hosted meeting on Friday without reaching a hoped-for truce, but agreed to talk again on Sunday.

“No serious development has been registered until now” during the meetings, Abed Rabbo said.

The Palestinian head of public security in the Gaza Strip, General Abdel Razaq al-Majaida, said Israel insisted on an approach that was based solely on security and refused to discuss Palestinian political demands.

“We reject this way of going about the talks,” he told Al-Ayam newspaper, close to the Palestinian Authority, adding that US special Mideast peace envoy Anthony Zinni was “doing his best to obtain a ceasefire in the (coming) two days”.

An official close to the Palestinian delegation said the “Palestinians do not expect much from the security talks because of Israel’s intransigence, and are not optimistic about an acceptance of their demands.

“I don’t think that we can arrive at a truce in due form. We must be happy with a period of actual relative calm,” he said.

There has been no comment from the Israeli side as to why there has been no breakthrough in the talks.—AFP