TEL AVIV, Jan 6: Israel on Monday barred Palestinians from attending talks in London on Middle East peace and leadership reforms at home in anger over twin suicide bombings that killed 22 people.
Israel’s refusal to heed a plea by Britain, which is sponsoring the Jan 14 talks between Palestinian officials and members of the Quartet of Middle East mediators, to rescind the edict touched off a dispute with London.
More than 100 people were wounded in the Tel Aviv blasts that turned a crowded pedestrian mall in a foreign workers’ neighbourhood into a killing field on Sunday.
Israel’s hawkish foreign minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, sparred over the telephone with his British counterpart, Jack Straw, who condemned the suicide bombings while voicing regret at the move to stymie the London conference.
Netanyahu, according to his office, told Straw that Britain should adopt US President George W. Bush’s position “that leaders compromised by terror cannot be partners for peace”, an apparent reference to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
“You in Britain are doing the exact opposite,” Netanyahu was quoted as telling Straw.
“No, it is Israel that is doing the opposite,” the Israeli statement quoted Straw as saying. “Instead of concentrating on dealing with terrorism, it is striking at (Palestinian) delegates.”
Condemned by the Palestinian Authority, the Tel Aviv attacks came three weeks before an Israeli election in which security concerns will be paramount for many voters, and could smooth right-wing Sharon’s bid to remain prime minister.
The bombings were the first in Israel in six weeks and the most serious in half a year.
GAZA BOMBED: Hours after the two suicide bombers detonated explosives packed with nails and bolts for more deadly effect, Israeli helicopter gunships targeted two foundries in Gaza City which the army described as weapons factories.
Five people were wounded in the air raid, one of many such attacks that Israel has mounted against similar targets in a 27-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood.
Israeli government sources said Sharon tempered a military response to the Tel Aviv bombings to avoid upsetting US efforts to win Arab support for an invasion of Iraq.
But they said that in addition to the London travel ban, Israel would prevent the Palestinian central council from meeting for the first time in two years on Thursday to ratify a Palestinian constitution.
The document was to include a clause on establishing the post of prime minister, a move that could help meet US and Israeli demands to sideline Arafat.
Sharon and his security cabinet also decided to close three Palestinian universities “in the coming days”, an Israeli political source said. Israel says the institutions serve as recruiting grounds for bombers, which the Palestinians deny.
“To prevent us from going to London means to prevent any attempt to revive the peace process and to break this vicious cycle of violence,” said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian minister and peace negotiator.
“To prevent the PCC from convening means to prevent the Palestinian people’s representatives from openly debating the constitution of the future Palestinian state,” he told Reuters.
The meeting of one of the top bodies in the Palestine Liberation Organization was to have been held in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Israel reoccupied most Palestinian cities including Ramallah after a series of suicide bombings in June.
FOUR FOREIGNERS KILLED: By Monday evening, eight of the dead in Tel Aviv had yet to be named. Forensics officials said the foreign citizens were identified as two Romanians, one Ghanaian and a Bulgarian.
The militant al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attacks in statements on Sunday and Monday, saying it was retaliating for demolitions of Palestinian homes.
But another statement issued in the name of the group on Sunday denied responsibility after Fatah’s main political body said the two men were not on its “membership files”.—Reuters