Violence continued over the weekend as Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in the territories and Arab youths took angrily to the streets in Jerusalem.
In the wake of the murders of some 40 Palestinian worshipers at a Hebron mosque, at least two Palestinians were killed after clashes in the Nablus area last Friday, military sources confirmed, while at least seven were wounded in separate incidents on Saturday.
In Washington, a Palestine Liberation Organization official, Nabil Sha’ath, held meetings last Thursday and Friday with State Department officials, including Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
One Palestinian official said late Friday that the Palestinians thought the meeting with Christopher “wasn’t satisfactory.”
A sticking point was the wording of a U.N. resolution currently under consideration that would condemn the Feb. 25 killings in Hebron.
A State Department official said late last Friday that the United States and the PLO had not come to any agreement on the resolution.
The Palestinians think the resolution should include mention of Jerusalem when referring to the territories, but the United States did not agree, according to a Palestinian official, who said Christopher and his aides “adhered to their declared position.”
The State Department official said the United States had not agreed to anything outside the framework of the Israeli-Palestinian declaration of principles, which formed the basis of the self-rule accord signed last September in Washington.
The PLO has called for an armed international presence in the territories to protect Palestinians. Israel has maintained its willingness in principle to have an unarmed international presence in the territories, as covered in the declaration of principles.
As the diplomatic wrangling continues, however, violence has erupted almost daily in Israel and the territories in the aftermath of the killing sat the Hebron mosque.
In the Gush Katif settlement in the Gaza Strip, two Israelis were stabbed in a greenhouse last Friday by three terrorists.
One of the Israelis, Yitzhak Cohen, suffered serious wounds, but he managed to shoot and kill one of the assailants and wound another.
On Saturday, hundreds of Arab youths began rioting outside the walls of the Old City following heated speeches by local PLO leaders at a rally in eastern Jerusalem.
Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, reportedly wounding 20 protesters.
In light of the heightened tensions, Israeli police took the unusual step last Friday of closing the plaza in front of the Western Wall to Jewish worshipers for more than an hour.
Police were worried that, with thousands of Palestinians at prayer on the Temple Mount, there would be a repeat of the violence that took place the week before, when Arab youths threw stones at Jewish worshipers below after an Israeli settler sprayed Muslim worshipers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs with gunfire, killing at least 40.
This last Friday, thousands of Arab worshipers at the Temple Mount left the area without any major incident.
The decision by police to remove Jewish worshipers was sharply criticized by Jerusalem’s mayor and others.
“We are very upset and frustrated by the unilateral decision of the police authorities to evacuate Jews from the Kotel (the Western Wall),” Mayor Ehud Olmert told Israel Radio on Sunday.
The Wall, Olmert said, is “the symbol of everything that characterizes Jewish life in this part of the world, the most important place.” As such, he said, it is “the last place” Jews should be barred from as a security measure.
He said he would do everything in his power to prevent the closure of the plaza again.
Meanwhile, according to reports, the PLO Executive has decided to stick to its demands that the settlers in the territories be disarmed and an international armed presence be established in the territories as a condition of resuming the autonomy talks.
But Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has rejected the demand for an armed international presence.
“There is no assurance that foreign observers will add to security. On the contrary,” he told Israel Television, “we may discover that foreign observers will become a target for Hamas,” the Islamic fundamentalist movement staunchly opposed to the peace process.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
