The meeting Friday between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and two senior Palestinian officials could be the prelude to a restart of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, as relative calm is gradually restored between the two sides.
"The Israeli prime minister is due to discuss measures aimed at easing the blockade on the (Palestinian) territories during his weekly cabinet meeting Sunday," a senior official from Ariel Sharon's office told AFP Saturday on condition of anonymity.
"This is in line with our long-standing policy of avoiding suffering for innocent Palestinian civilians in sectors of the territories where there are no terrorist activities," he added.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP Saturday that during his talks Friday with Peres and Palestinian parliamentary speaker Ahmed Qorei, the Israeli minister "promised measures easing the blockade on the Palestinian territories."
"The meeting was very serious and positive ... But experience has taught us to remain cautious, and what will actually happen on the ground in the next days remains to be seen. It will be a test of how serious the Israelis are," Qorei told the Al-Ayam daily.
A Haaretz online report Saturday confirmed the new developments.
The paper quoted a senior official as saying Sharon will on Sunday announce Israel's intent to ease the restrictions on the Palestinian population in areas in which relative quiet has been maintained. Government sources told Israel Radio that if the quiet is not maintained, the easing of restrictions would be reversed.
Sharon's spokesman Raanan Gissin said that Israel had agreed to ease the blockade to "move the negotiations forward," although the Palestinian Authority “was not fulfilling its part in a truce reaffirmed on September 26.”
Gissin declined to give a timetable, but said Israel would allow thousands of Palestinian laborers from the West Bank into Israel for the first time in months, remove roadblocks, and ease traffic restrictions in areas that were quiet. "It's a controlled access...but it's a first step," Gissin said. "We still reserve the right to exercise self-defense. If we see no measures are taken against these terrorists and there are casualties...we will exercise our right to self-defense just as the United States is doing in Afghanistan," he said.
Peres, who held a two-hour meeting with Sharon on Thursday, wanted to authorize easing of restrictions on the Palestinians in the territories and to begin negotiations on getting the IDF out of the Abu Sneina neighborhood of Hebron.
Meanwhile, tension between Sharon and Peres is on the rise, with the latter sensing that the former is leading Israel toward a dangerous diplomatic impasse. The prime minister, for his part, is critical of the foreign minister's efforts to continue talks with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
"I won't let Peres see Arafat again," Sharon told his associates, with a senior government source explaining that the prime minister is convinced that "after every Peres-Arafat meeting there is a dramatic rise in the number of attacks."
Israel and the Palestinians have recently held a string of security meetings aimed at implementing a truce-consolidating deal reached on September 26 by Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
There was also word that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will join a diplomatic push the week to support the tentative peace moves.
Blair has invited Arafat to London on Monday for talks on the Middle East, as well the US-led bombing of Afghanistan, the British Foreign Office said.
Arafat is also to meet with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, while Blair will meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II in London on Tuesday.
Fischer, meanwhile, who has been playing a leading role in bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to the peace table, will travel to the Middle East at the end of next week, a German foreign ministry spokesman was quoted by AFP as saying.
For his part, the head of Israel's domestic security agency Shin Beth, Avi Dichter, is expected to travel to Washington to brief the administration on the security situation in Israel, radio also reported.
Despite relative calm over the past few days, Israeli officials have complained that radical Palestinian organisations have continued their attacks on Israeli positions.
They also charge that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had failed to arrest the Palestinian militants mentioned on the the list of 108 people deemed a threat by Israel.
"Arafat has arrested a few individuals who are detained in comfortable conditions. But the ten most dangerous terrorists are still free, and he has broken his personal commitment to jail Atef Abayat," suspected of the September murder of a Jewish settler woman near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the official from Sharon's office told AFP – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
