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Barak turns from peace efforts toward coalition

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October 25, 2000 

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli troops and Palestinians clashed in rain-drenched streets Tuesday, while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak pressed ahead with negotiations to bring hawkish opposition leader Ariel Sharon into a coalition government.

With no current prospects for a Mideast peace deal, Barak was searching for partners to bolster his vulnerable minority government, which is in danger of collapse. His negotiators held a second day of talks with parliamentary factions, including Sharon, the man many Palestinians blame for igniting the present spasm of violence.

"Friends, this is a time of emergency, and in an emergency, brothers walk together," Barak said on Israeli radio.

Meanwhile, Israeli army Col. Noam Tivon, a commander on the West Bank, said the military didn't expect the clashes to end soon. "We definitely need to prepare for a long period of conflict," he told Israel radio.

Clashes again broke out in the Gaza Strip, where the weather was dry, while rain appeared to dampen, but did not extinguish clashes in the West Bank on Tuesday. Palestinian authorities reported three more deaths.

A 55-year-old Palestinian man was killed in his house overnight when he was hit in the head by gunfire in Hebron. After daybreak, Palestinian rock throwers confronted Israeli troops along the main street of Hebron, in the West Bank.

A Palestinian teen-ager was shot dead Tuesday in clashes near the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, the Shifa hospital said. Also, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, Iyad Shaath, died of a gunshot wound to the head suffered four days earlier in the Gaza Strip, the hospital said.

For Palestinians, Tuesday was a holiday marking the ascension of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad to heaven from Jerusalem. The Israeli military called on Palestinians "not to send schoolchildren to violent confrontations with the security forces." The Palestinians, meanwhile, accuse the Israelis of using excessive force in the daily confrontations.

In almost four weeks of fighting - which erupted following Sharon's Sept. 28 visit to a disputed holy site in Jerusalem - 126 people have been killed and thousands injured, the vast majority Palestinians.

Israeli army tanks positioned on the outskirts of Jerusalem fired three shells late Monday toward Palestinian gunmen shooting from the nearby Palestinian village of Beit Jalla. Four Palestinians were injured in the Israeli fire. It was the second night of clashes on Jerusalem's periphery, sparked each time by bursts of gunfire emanating from Beit Jalla.

Israel sealed Beit Jalla Monday in an effort to keep gunmen out of the village perched over a riverbed facing Gilo, a Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood.

At a Palestinian Cabinet meeting headed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the ministers issued a statement saying Israel was attempting to get "by force and attacks, what it cannot get through negotiations."

In response to nearly a month of fighting, Barak on Sunday called a "timeout" in the peace process - a move Sharon had urged - and launched talks with the opposition leader. Barak and Sharon met for several hours Monday and their teams held additional talks Tuesday in an effort to hammer out an agreement for shared control of a unity government.

Sharon, who leads the right-wing Likud party, reportedly demanded measures to ensure his equal say in whether the peace process is renewed.

Barak, whose team was also meeting with other political factions, hopes to form a majority coalition before parliament returns from a three-month recess Sunday.

Palestinians and Israeli liberals have warned that Sharon's inclusion in the government would crush the peace process.

"Sharon is simply not interested in the peace process," said Ziad Abu Amr, a Palestinian political analyst.

Palestinians revile Sharon, who believes that Israel should cling to land captured in the 1967 Mideast war rather than trade it for a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Barak's decision to withdraw from the peace process, at least temporarily, has put on hold seven years of grinding negotiations with the Palestinians.

There was little hope of new talks, and both sides have raised the possibility of unilateral actions. The Palestinians have spoken of declaring a Palestinian state without Israel's agreement, while Israel has warned it is considering a "unilateral separation" from the Palestinians that would include setting boundaries.