A new US envoy pressed Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Sunday for an end to eight months of bloodshed, just hours after two car bombings shook central Jerusalem, reported Reuters.
William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, was quoted as saying he had urged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah to "do everything possible to stop such attacks".
Meeting later in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Burns received a pledge that Israeli forces would continue exercising restraint -- although not indefinitely -- despite the latest wave of bombings.
The first round of separate talks -- part of an increase in Middle East peacemaking by the Republican administration of President George W. Bush -- appeared to have done little to narrow differences between the two sides.
But Israeli government spokesman Raanan Gissin said: "One should derive some encouragement from the fact that this process has begun."
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was quoted by the agency as saying Israeli officials had proposed, as a first step toward halting violence, the resumption of meetings on security coordination with Palestinians that were suspended months ago.
VIOLENCE CONTINUES
Despite the new US peacemaking initiative, violence flared on Sunday in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Haaretz reported that an explosive device was discovered Sunday evening next to the fence of Bat Hefer, north of Tulkarem, just inside the Green Line. A Bat Hefer resident called the police after discovering the briefcase on a fence, which he said was placed by a Palestinian who fled the scene.
Police sappers, who said the briefcase contained a powerful explosive device, began to disarm it. After the bomb was removed from the area, there was gunfire from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas directed at Bat Hefer. Three homes were damaged, but there were no injuries. The Israeli troops returned fire, said the paper.
Reuters also reported that two 20-year-old Palestinians were wounded Sunday -- one seriously -- by Jewish settlers who opened fire near the Jewish settlement of Tekoa in the West Bank, said Dr. Kamel Jabril, director of a Palestinian health clinic.
A witness said he saw a settler fire at the two people on a road. Police said they were checking the report.
In the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation troops entered a Palestinian-ruled area with bulldozers and a tank to destroy trees and shrubbery where landmines had been planted, military officials claimed.
Such actions have led Palestinians to reject Sharon's ceasefire call as an empty gesture.
"Israeli allegations of ceasing fire are only for propaganda. Israel did not commit itself to the ceasefire and the occupation army intensified its aggression and shooting against innocent civilians," said Gaza public security chief Abdel-Razek Al Majaydeh, quoted by the agency.
After nightfall, a gunman shot dead a 60-year-old Palestinian man suspected of collaborating with the Israelis in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, Palestinian security and hospital sources told the agency.
The killing occurred hours after two car bombs exploded in Jerusalem, the latest in a stream of attacks launched by Islamic resistance during a Palestinian uprising which erupted last September after peace negotiations deadlocked.
Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the second blast, said it would not be the last time it would strike in the heart of Jerusalem. "More car bombs and martyrs are on their way," it said in a statement.
The first bomb exploded minutes after midnight in a bar district packed with young Israelis and the other at 9:00 am off a main shopping street ahead of the Jewish festival of Shavuot commemorating the receiving of the biblical Ten Commandments.
The second one was loaded with mortar bombs which flew over rooftops, landing unexploded on a porch and in a public park hundreds of meters (yards) away.
Police said several people were hurt by glass shards in the second blast and another 30 were shaken badly enough by the impact to seek medical attention. No injuries were reported in the earlier bombing.
Both blasts occurred near Jerusalem's main police station.
RUSSIA CRITICIZES ISRAEL FOR MIDEAST VIOLENCE
Russia on Sunday criticized Israel for the escalation of Palestinian-Israel violence and praised as "practical" an Egyptian-Jordanian proposal for a ceasefire, according to the Associated Press.
"The current Israeli policies are destroying [peace] achievements," Yevgeny Primakov, the former prime minister and President Vladimir Putin's special envoy, said after talks with Jordan's parliamentary speaker Abdul-Hadi Majali.
"We are very worried that peace accomplishments would be destroyed if the [violence] persists," he said, cited by AP.
Primakov arrived in Amman on Saturday on the first leg of a Mideast tour that will also take him to Syria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
He praised a Jordanian-Egyptian peace plan to end violence in the Palestinian lands and stop Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people, saying the proposal contained "practical ideas" to end eight months of violence.
The Egyptian-Jordanian cease-fire plan requires Israel to end all construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza -- a call that Israel opposes and that also appears in a draft report by an international commission led by former US senator George Mitchell.
Primakov urged Israel to stop settlement building and put and end to policies which are encouraging extremism and 'weakening the peace camp," the official Petra news agency reported – Albawaba.com
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