Gunmen Kill 2 Israeli Businessmen : Mideast: Militant Muslim group opposed to peace accord claims responsibility.

Two Israeli businessmen were gunned down as they drove through an Arab village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, apparently by Muslim fundamentalists attempting to upset plans for Palestinian self-government being worked out by Israeli and PLO negotiators in Paris.

The two Israelis, both ultra-religious haredi Orthodox, were murdered near the town of Ramallah, 10 miles north of Jerusalem, by two Palestinian gunmen firing from another car as the Israelis returned from visiting a business partner in the Jewish settlement of Ofra.

The militant Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, which strongly opposes the plan for Palestinian autonomy, said its military wing carried out the attack to avenge the murders by Israeli settlers of three Palestinians near Hebron earlier this month and the killing in November of one of its members by Israeli troops. Hamas said the attack was the third of five it has planned.

The victims were identified as Meir Mendelovitz, 32, the father of eight children, and Eliyahu Levine, 25, the father of a baby girl. Both came from Tel Aviv’s ultra-Orthodox suburb, Bnei Brak, and had gone to Ofra to buy religious artworks from a supplier.

Twenty Israelis and 44 Palestinians have been killed in the continuing violence since Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization concluded their peace agreement in September.

Israeli opposition leaders, bitterly denouncing the accord on Palestinian self-government, angrily demanded that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin break off negotiations with the PLO and recall Foreign Minister Shimon Peres from Paris, where he is trying to work out the implementation of the autonomy agreement.

“Again we see that this peace isn’t peace,” said former Justice Minister Moshe Nissim, a leader of the opposition Likud Party, during a raucous debate in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, as rightists accused the government of failing to protect its citizens. “We are counting the cost in victims.”

Peres replied from France that the attack only underscored the need to implement the peace accord.

“Such a murderous act underlines the urgent need to achieve implementation of agreement with the Palestinians as soon as possible while safeguarding Israeli national security,” he said. “Any time wasted strengthens the terrorists, whereas an agreement strikes a blow at them. Hamas’ worst enemy is peace, which will be achieved through dialogue with moderate Palestinians.”

In a statement in Versailles, outside Paris, where the talks with the PLO were under way, Peres said he was satisfied by reports that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat was shocked at the murders and had condemned them.

Israeli and PLO negotiators met for a second day in a Versailles hotel in an effort to break the stalemate over implementation of the autonomy agreement.

Shortly after midnight Wednesday, Uri Savir, director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, emerged from the negotiations and told reporters: “Everybody’s leaving in the morning, and a statement will be issued.”

Savir looked discouraged but declined to elaborate on how the talks were progressing.

Each side was reportedly trying out on the other potential ways in which Israel and the Palestinians could both control entrance and exit from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho District on the West Bank once Israel withdraws.

Israel says this is a question of its security, because anyone entering the two territories can reach Tel Aviv. But the underlying issue is not the possible introduction of heavily armed forces but rather the return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, some in exile since the 1948 founding of the Jewish state, who might flood into the two areas.

PLO sources said one option submitted by Israel was to have a Palestinian checkpoint and then an Israeli one at entry points into the autonomous region. Arafat rejected this, the sources said, because he could not accept direct control by Israelis of Palestinians entering a Palestinian land.

But the sources said the PLO was aware that the negotiators’ role was to find a compromise that responded equally to “the Palestinians’ dignity and to Israeli security demands.”

The negotiators reportedly were waiting for Arafat’s reaction to other compromises, and Peres was in continual telephone contact with Rabin here.

Yasser Abed-Rabbo, a top Arafat aide, is leading the Palestinian delegation. Norwegian diplomats, who had helped mediate the basic agreement on Palestinian self-government, were also participating.

In Tunis, the secretary general of Israel’s ruling Labor Party met with Arafat for the second time in two days in a further effort to break the deadlock.

“There was some progress, but not enough,” Nissim Zvilli told state-run Israel Radio later. “There are some new ideas. Maybe they will solve the problem, though the solution is not easy.”

Israeli soldiers were to have begun withdrawing from Gaza and Jericho on Dec. 13, three months after the signing of the basic accord on self-government, but the move was held up when Rabin and Arafat failed to agree on the terms for it.

The withdrawal is scheduled to be completed by April 13.

Jewish settlers, enraged by the continuing Hamas terrorism on the West Bank, said Wednesday that they will step up efforts to prevent implementation of the autonomy plan, and thousands demonstrated at nearly 70 rallies up and down the country to protest the latest killings.