Palestinians Cut Delegation to Peace Talks

Palestinians brought a small delegation to Middle East peace talks Monday to signal their growing disillusionment with the peace process.

The Palestinian decision to send only a truncated four-person team to Washington cast a shadow over the talks’ eighth round, which opened at the State Department and are to last until Dec. 17.

Radical Palestinians have been pressing Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to halt the talks until Israel agrees to discuss an independent Palestinian state.

Raising the stakes, a Muslim fundamentalist group that opposes the talks claimed responsibility for an ambush that left three Israeli reservists dead in the occupied Gaza Strip early Monday.

It was the worst attack on Israeli troops since February, when three soldiers were hacked to death at their base in northern Israel.

The fundamentalist group Hamas said it will intensify its attacks to mark the beginning of the sixth year of the Palestinian uprising, which started Dec. 9, 1987.

The government retaliated by announcing that Palestinians from the Gaza Strip will be barred from entering Israel.

Elyakim Rubinstein, the chief Israeli negotiator to the peace talks, characterized the attack as “a stab in the heart.”

Despite the Israeli-Palestinian tension, the new round of talks opened on the fastest track yet between Israel and Jordan. Working teams will deal with specific issues under an agenda approved in the last round, Rubinstein said.

Israel is offering to let the Palestinians take charge of their own affairs, including agriculture and hospitals. But Palestinian negotiators want the plan to be geared to eventual statehood and want Israel to stop settling the territories.

They also want the United States to lean on the Israelis. On Monday, the Palestinian delegation urged the United States to formally enter the discussions.

Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian spokeswoman, said after seeing Assistant Secretary of State Edward P. Djerejian, “They’re looking into it.”