Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday Israel would give the Palestinians "three or four days" more to end the violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"We have bowed to the requests of many foreign leaders and we have agreed to extend the delay by three or four days," Barak said in an interview on public radio, referring to a two-day ultimatum which expired late Monday, according to AFP.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli government decided to give Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat up to another two days to end the violence in the Palestinian territories, a minister said after a marathon cabinet session.
"It was decided to give one to two days given requests from world leaders and the visits of high-level officials to the region," acting labor and social affairs minister, Raanan Cohen, told reporters.
He was speaking after a five-hour meeting of the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Ehud Barak after the expiry of a 48-hour ultimatum demanding that Arafat end 12 days of violence or risk the collapse of the peace process.
"The prime minister and defense minister (Barak) instructed the army and security forces to increase and expand their areas of operation in protecting the citizens of the country in every appropriate way," said an official statement read by cabinet secretary Yitzhak Herzog.
"The political negotiations with the Palestinian issues which deal with the substantive issues of the permanent settlement will be renewed when the violence we have seen is over," it said.
The government also said it regarded with "gravity and sorrow" the eruption of violence involving Jews and Arabs inside Israel itself.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived in the region on Monday in a bid to quell the Israeli-Palestinian violence and prevent the conflict spreading to Lebanon following the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese militant Islamic movement Hizbollah.
"The government will continue to act in every possible way for the release of the kidnapped soldiers and other prisoners and servicemen missing in action and their safe return home," the statement said.
Hizbollah is seeking the release of Lebanese militants who have been held in Israeli jails for years without charge or trial as bargaining chips for Israeli servicemen who went missing in Lebanon after the Jewish state's invasion of its northern neighbor in 1982 – (AFP)
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