NEW PALESTINIAN SUICIDE ATTACKS ARE BAD BLOWS TO ARAFAT AND PEACE
By IPS Diplomatic correspondent Nina Kamran
PARIS 25 MAY (IPS) A Palestinian suicide car that shattered an Israeli passenger bus in the central town of Hadera Friday is likely to also shatter the very meagre prospects and hopes for Israeli and Palestinian sitting again behind negotiation table, encouraged by Washington and Paris.
Two young Palestinians "entehari" (volunteers to die),
driving a car filled with explosives, rammed the bus number 841 travelling from Tel
Aviv to Kiryat Shmona near the city's central bus station and
detonated it, living at least two dead, believed to be the enteharis, and more
than60 wounded, including children, some of them reported by police and hospital
sources in critical conditions.
At about the same time and in seemingly similar operation, another "entehari"
was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Gaza as he tried to hit a convoy of Jewish
settlers cars.
Israel’s right wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said there would be no immediate military response.
The Iranian-backed and supported Islamic Jihad of Palestine and HAMAS, the largest of the Palestinian organisations opposed to peace with the Jewish State claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The operations were a bad and humiliating blow to the Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yaser Arafat as they came barely one day after from Paris, he proposed an "urgent" meeting of the participants in the last round of peace talks held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm al Sheilkh plus members of the Mitchell Commission aimed at sending some blood to the almost defunct Oslo Accords.
"They (HAMAS and Islamic Jihad) did what the Israeli were eagerly after and could not achieve despite the huge support they enjoy in the US and Europe, that is to win the crucial war of public relation", commented a frustrated Palestinian political analyst, adding: "Sometimes, I wonder whom they are working for. Us, the oppressed Palestinians of the usurpers?"
Both Gaza and Tel-Aviv had earlier announced their "conditional" agreement to the Mitchell plan for resuming negotiation, based, for Mr. Sharon, of stopping at once construction of new settlements in Palestinian territories and for Mr. Arafat to prevent further terrorist operations against Israel.
Mr. Sharon had refused the condition while declaring a unilateral truce that Mr. Arafat ridiculed as "a farce".
Mr. Hubert Vedrine, the French Socialist Foreign Minister said France had told Mr. Arafat to say "in the clearest way" what he can do to save the Palestinians and the Israelis from plunging into ravine, adding that the same question would be put to Mr. Sharon when he come to Paris on 6 June.
As France’s President Jacques Chirac and his Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin were urging Mr. Arafat "to do his best to stop the dangerous spiral of violence", the US President George W. Bush, ending his "soft approach policy", talked on the phone with both Palestinian and Israeli leaders and secured their "in principle" acceptance of the Mitchell proposals.
Pressed by the dangerous escalation of conflict between the two intertwined Israeli and Palestinian people, France and the United States, had embarked on a new round of initiatives, led by Mr. Xavier Solana, the European Union’s "Foreign Minister" and Mr. William Burns, the US ambassador to Amman, Jordan.
Nominated Mr. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State as Washington’s Special Representative and Mediator to the warring sides, Mr Burns is expected to meet Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat next week.
The new US, France and EU’s diplomatic ballet was prompted after Israel attacked Palestinian positions in the West Bank and Gaza with American-made F-16 warplanes in retaliation for the last Friday morning suicide operation by a single Palestinian who blew himself at the entrance of a crowded shopping mall in the heart of Netenya, killing five and wounding more than 100 shoppers.
The explosion was the worst terror attacks by Palestinians inside Israel since the outbreak of the new intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation, started last September after Mr. Sharon, then Head of the opposition Likud Party, visited the "Temple Mount", for the Israelis and the "Holly Esplanade" for the Muslims, sparking riots by young Palestinians who clashed with Israeli police protecting the former General.
Since then, more than 600 Palestinians and about 90 Israelis have died in daily clashes between Palestinians and the Tsahal, the Israeli army, escalating from "M-16" automatic to F-16 fighter-bombers, the most advanced weapon in the Israeli arsenal.
Reacting to Friday's bombs, Mr Sharon said Israel would "not sit around with our arms folded, but we have to wait a few days to give an opportunity for Arafat to call a ceasefire". ENDS ISRAEL PALESTINE NEGOTIATIONS 25501