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Israelis and Palestinians trade accusations

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January 4, 2001 

JERUSALEM, JAN 3 (UNB/AP) - Israel will hunt down any Palestinians involved in attacks on Israelis, including those serving in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, the deputy defense minister said Wednesday, raising the level of threats.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said Israel believes Palestinian Authority officials were involved in recent attacks, and that in the weeks leading up to Israel's Feb. 6 election, Israel would focus on suppressing Palestinian violence.

Senior Arafat aide Ahmed Abdel Rahman, meanwhile, said Israel's tentative plan to erect border barriers in the West Bank without consulting the Palestinians - in case the latest U.S. peace initiative fails - was a "declaration of war."

The bitter words came before several Palestinian officials said that Arafat has conditionally accepted U.S. President Bill Clinton's peace proposals as a basis for negotiations. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that after two meetings with Clinton in Washington on Tuesday, Arafat agreed to 12 days of negotiations with Israel, to start in the coming days.

There was no official announcement from the Clinton administration or Arafat's entourage in Washington.

Clinton suggests creating a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and grant the Palestinians control over a key Jerusalem shrine and Arab neighborhoods in the city.

The Palestinians have said Clinton's offer fell short of Palestinian demands, and that the state he envisioned would be cut up into several parts.

The key sticking point is the fate of nearly 4 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Arafat insists that the refugees be given the right to return to homes in what is now Israel - a demand Barak has said he will never accept.

Abdel Rahman said the Palestinians would not accept so-called bridging proposals, such as postponing the refugee issue. "There is no acceptance on the Palestinian side on any delay on any issue, especially the refugee issue," he said.

A peace agreement is widely believed to boost Barak's struggle for re-electionrist acts, he has to be hit," Sneh told Israel army radio. The deputy minister said that no one was immune, "even if he had a position in the Palestinian Authority."

Until now, the highest-ranking official targeted was Thabet Thabet, head of Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Thabet, a dentist who also worked in the Palestinian Health Ministry, was killed Sunday.

Israeli police, meanwhile, said they had uncovered a five-member cell of the militant Islamic Jihad group that was planning car bomb explosions inside Israel. The cell's members were arrested two weeks ago, but a news blackout was imposed.

A leader of the group, Saed Harouf, was killed two weeks ago in an encounter with Israeli border police. A second, Khalil Arba, was wounded and taken prisoner.

Israel's army said that troops briefly seized a fortified Palestinian position in the West Bank late Tuesday, as soldiers pursued gunmen who ambushed an Israeli car, wounding two motorists.