The Israeli Cabinet has decided to extend the closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip for at least another week.
The move came amid reports of more planned terrorist attacks against Israel. No details were released.
The decision on the closure, made at the weekly Cabinet session here, came as the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt and Jordan and a senior Palestinian Authority official convened in Washington to discuss the impasse in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
An official present at the Cabinet meeting said Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin restated Israel’s demand that the Palestinian Authority crack down on Islamic terror as a condition for lifting the closure.
The closure was imposed more than three weeks ago after a suicide bombing attack near Netanya that killed 21 Israelis.
In his meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat last week in Gaza, Rabin proposed the establishment of a court system that would try individuals suspected of terrorist activities. He also proposed that the Palestinians institute a registration of all arms inside the self-rule areas, the disarmament of Palestinian groups opposed to the Israel-PLO accord and the turning over to Israel of Palestinians suspected of murdering Israelis.
Last week’s talks made no apparent progress and Rabin and Arafat agreed to meet again, possibly later this week.
In Washington, however, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he had secured an agreement from Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath to establish emergency courts that would try suspected terrorists.
Peres said that despite the closure, Israel would allow exports and imports between Gaza and the rest of the world.
He said that Israel would judge the Palestinians “by their deeds, not by their words.”
There can be “many opinions but only one rifle,” he said, referring to the need to reign in militants opposed to the peace process.
Peres also said Israel does not expect “100 percent success, but a clear, visible effort to try to end terrorism.”
Black in Jerusalem, Environment Minister Yossi Sarid, a leading negotiator in the talks with the PLO and a member of the left-wing Meretz bloc, said a tougher stand against terror by Arafat could lead to more flexibility on Israel’s part in the self-rule negotiations.
“I’m quite sure that if Chairman Arafat will do his obligation with regard to terror and be much more strict with regard to terror and terrorists, we’ll be much more flexible with regard to elections in the occupied territories and redeployment,” Sarid said, referring to the issues currently under negotiation.
Economics Minister Shimon Shetreet said recent reports that Palestinian police had thwarted planned terrorist attacks were not enough to justify lifting the closure.
“Here and there they happened to catch a car that had ammunition, so they stopped it. This is not preventing [terror],” he said. “I have not heard that they have disarmed the Islamic Jihad or the Hamas [fundamentalist groups], that train themselves openly, that dance when there is a terrorist activity in our cities and that burn as a matter of daily activity the flag of Israel.
The Palestinian police have to prove themselves, he said, adding, “They not only have to arrest, but to prevent.”
A senior Palestinian Authority official criticized Israel for prolonging the impasse in negotiations by refusing to lift the closure, which has prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from reaching jobs in Israel.
Last week, Prime Minister Rabin told visiting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown that the Palestinians derive 40 percent of their gross domestic product from jobs inside Israel.
“The longer the Israelis maintain the closure, the longer the stalemate in the peace process,” said Saeb Erekat, who heads the committee on negotiations for Palestinian elections in the territories.
But Sarid said that closure would not be lifted in coming days.
“There is no other choice,” he said. “We have to continue with the closure because we have solid information about possible terrorist events during this week.”
At the prime minister’s request, the Meretz Cabinet members postponed until next week an appeal they planned to submit over a ministerial committee’s decision to approve construction in the Jerusalem satellite communities of Ma’aleh Adumim and Betar.
In other development, Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer request that some 9,000 additional foreign workers be allowed into Israel to make up for the Palestinian laborers unable to reach construction jobs because of the closure.
The additional workers would bring to 60,000 the number of foreign workers in the building industry.
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