The Bush administration is mapping out a plan for implementing the recommendations made by the Mitchell Committee, Israeli sources said Thursday.
The plan will be ready in a few days, following which, US ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer will present the plan to politicians in Israel, the sources told Haaretz newspaper.
The sources said that the plan would include a US observer force, but added that the Americans did not want the observers to have set positions throughout the implementation, for fear that they would be “caught in cross-fires and terrorist attacks.”
The Americans are still debating whether the observers would deal with the ceasefire exclusively, or whether they would also make sure that the Mitchell Report recommendations were implemented by both sides, including the freezing of settlement building, they said.
The paper said that Israeli officials were skeptical that such a plan would work, because as of yet, they claim that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has yet to make a “strategic decision to stop the violence.”
On Wednesday, in an indication that Israel would accept American truce monitors if offered, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres turned aside reports that Washington had rejected the possible deployment of CIA personnel as monitors of the bullet-riddled ceasefire, AFP said.
Israeli media reported Wednesday that the Bush administration had turned down a reported proposal to expand the CIA delegation that oversees Israeli-Palestinian security coordination.
The proposed expansion was aimed at overcoming longstanding Israeli objections that an international observer force would impinge on Israeli sovereignty and military freedom of movement, while granting a diplomatic "prize to Palestinian terror."
"Observers are not the problem. Observers will not be of benefit, nor will they do damage. They do not have special significance. The problem is between the attempt of the Arab side to internationalize the conflict between us, and our opposition to such internationalization. So if there are American observers - no matter under what designation - there is no danger of internationalization," Peres said, cited by Haaretz.
Israel has said it fears that international intervention will lead to an imposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
PALESTINIANS FREEZE SECURITY MEETINGS UNTIL ISRAEL STOPS ASSASSINATIONS, KIDNAPPINGS
Palestinian leaders will not meet with Israeli representatives for security coordination meetings as long as Israel continues its kidnappings and assassinations, a senior Palestinian security official said Wednesday.
The Palestinian security chief for the Gaza Strip, Gen. Abdelrazek Al Madjaydeh, made the announcement after Wednesday’s failed security coordination meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials in Tel Aviv, reported the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
CIA representatives declared the talks dead after just an hour and a half of deliberations, and the Palestinians called the meeting a "fiasco," Israel’s Army Radio reported, cited by the paper.
The meeting took place hours after a Palestinian activist was assassinated by Israeli tank fire in the West Bank city of Nablus.
During the meeting, both sides raised various claims regarding violations of the Tenet ceasefire agreement, and the Americans said that in order to achieve results, dialogue between the two sides had to be improved.
An Israeli source told Haaretz newspaper that his delegation accused the Palestinians of not respecting the ceasefire announced on June 13, and of "pursuing violence and not stopping acts of terrorism."
"The meeting failed," said the source.
The Palestinians condemned the continuing Israeli incursions and murders, an official Palestinian source told AFP.
In the meeting, the Palestinians gave the United States representatives a list of 50 Israeli "terrorists" responsible for attacks on Palestinians.
Israel rejected the list in advance, calling it propaganda, Haaretz said.
Earlier Wednesday, a Palestinian activist was blown up when a volley of Israeli tank shells slammed into his car in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, witnesses and hospital officials said.
Salah Darwazeh, 37, was a member of the Islamic movement Hamas, which vowed to avenge his death.
The Israeli army said it had deliberately targeted him because he was preparing "a large-scale attack against Israeli citizens in Israeli territory."
"An Israeli unit carried out an attack today against Salah Darwazeh, a major Hamas terrorist who was a member of the movement's leadership in Nablus," an army statement said.
Hamas sources said Darwazeh was a political activist who had a role on the committee of the National and Islamic Forces, a coalition of 13 Palestinian groups including Hamas.
"We in Hamas hold Israel fully responsible for the killing and the occupation forces should understand that they cannot murder without a response from our people," a Hamas leader, Jamal Mansour, told AFP in Nablus.
Darwazeh's death brings to 54 the number of people killed since the ceasefire was declared on June 13, according to AFP estimates.
The Israeli army said Darwazeh had been implicated in a series of attacks, including two suicide bombings in Netanya, a seaside resort north of Tel Aviv on March 4 and May 18, which killed eight Israelis and injured 130 others.
He was imprisoned for two years in Israel between 1994 and 1996 in connection with his anti-Israeli activities. He was also jailed sporadically by the Palestinian Authority between 1997 and 1999, the army statement added.
"The Israeli army will continue its operations to thwart Palestinian attacks to ensure the security of Israeli citizens and soldiers," it concluded.
The killing brings to 42 the number of victims of Israel's assassination policy.
In other development, a Jewish settler and one Israeli soldier were lightly wounded in an exchange of fire with Palestinian gunmen in the southern Gaza Strip near the Egyptian border, Israeli press said.
A Palestinian woman was also shot in the chest during an exchange of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen in a village south of Nablus, hospital sources said, cited by AFP.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
