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Time to make a deal? Barak says yes; Arafat's not sure |
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December 26, 2000
JERUSALEM--(UNB/AP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, two days away from a White House deadline, weighed their willingness Monday to hold a summit and sign a peace treaty. Arafat expressed reservations; Barak said it was the time to make a deal. "We still have to thoroughly review the American suggestions," the Palestinian leader told reporters in the Gaza Strip after he and two members of his negotiating team traveled to Egypt to confer with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "There are a lot of obstacles." Barak, meanwhile, likened this peace bid to clearing a minefield. "Now we are at the point that the last mines must be dismantled," he told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper in an interview published in Monday's editions. "And this cannot be done without incurring both personal and political risks." Barak is racing the clock on a peace accord. Only six weeks from now, he faces veteran right-wing politician Ariel Sharon in an election battle, and polls suggest Sharon is leading by a wide margin. By standards of the past three months - during which at least 345 people, mainly Palestinians, have been killed in fighting that has swept the West Bank and Gaza Strip - Monday was an unusually quiet day, with neither serious clashes nor new fatalities reported by nightfall. Still, the violence overshadowed Christmas Day celebrations in Bethlehem, the biblical birthplace of Jesus. Devoid of decorations and almost empty of tourists, the West Bank town - expected earlier to be thronged with visitors for this millennial Christmas - instead marked a sad, subdued holiday, with only the bare minimum of religious observances. "I can't bear the idea that Bethlehem should be shut down for Christmas," said visitor Janet Maxwell, from Inverness in Scotland. But she added that it didn't seem right to celebrate. The violence was also casting a pall over holidays this week for both Jews and Muslims. Most Palestinians planned only low-key observances for one of the year's most important holidays, the three-day Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The date will be determined by the sighting of the crescent moon. Jews, meanwhile, were midway through the eight days of Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights, when candles are lit nightly to commemorate the victory of an outnumbered band of Jewish fighters. On the negotiating front, Barak faced an uphill battle to win public support for concessions to the Palestinians. Opinion polls published Monday suggested Israelis were deeply divided over the reported terms of President Clinton's peace plan. Israel is reportedly willing to make compromises on sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the borders of a Palestinian state. In return, it expects Palestinians to scale back their longstanding demand that Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during Israel's war of independence and subsequent fighting be allowed to return to their homes. Clinton asked the two sides to report back to him Wednesday on whether the proposals, aired during consultations in Washington last week, represented any prospect for an accord. Sources on both sides indicate the two will agree to the broad outlines, but seek some changes. Meanwhile, Israel was beefing up border security. Barak's deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, said the prime minister was spending 25 million to build fortifications and security outposts along the so-called Green Line, which approximates Israel's frontier with the West Bank before the 1967 Mideast war. "It is a barrier ... to hinder anyone who wants to bring a vehicle into Israel, whether for a terrorist act or other purposes," Sneh told Israel radio. He said the fortifications would not necessarily delineate the boundaries of a future Palestinian state. |