Netanyahu and Arafat Meet to Ease Tensions

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat held their first meeting in eight months early today in a bid to defuse tensions that have brought Middle East peacemaking to the brink of collapse.

The predawn summit at the Erez border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip was arranged by U.S. special envoy Dennis B. Ross, who told reporters later it was “a very good meeting.”

Ross said the two leaders agreed to meet on a regular basis and to resume contacts “on all levels between the two sides.”

“I think at one point they emphasized that they saw this as a new beginning between the leaders and, indeed, a new beginning for the [peace] process,” Ross said after the two-hour summit.

The meeting, the first since February between Netanyahu and Arafat, could signal a thaw in the crisis that has afflicted peace efforts, which have been shaken by Israeli settlement building and Islamic suicide bombings.

It came one day after Ross, in the region to try to jump-start the long-stalled peace efforts, presided over a formal reopening of the negotiations. And it came against a backdrop of a political storm in Israel, where Netanyahu is facing criticism for a botched Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan.

Israel Radio reported that Netanyahu pressed for the summit, perhaps to deflect attention from the growing scandal at home. It was unclear whether it would have that result or whether it could help get the peace process back on track.

Meanwhile, the spiritual leader of the militant Islamic movement Hamas on Tuesday received a steady stream of visitors a day after his return to the Gaza Strip following eight years in Israeli prisons. Sheik Ahmed Yassin also floated a conditional proposal for a cease-fire with Israel.

While Israeli officials immediately rejected specifics of the heavily qualified offer by Yassin, they welcomed it in principle, noting that it may indicate new openness on the part of Hamas to reach accommodation with Israel.

“It has a certain significance because it’s coming from Yassin,” said David Bar-Illan, a spokesman for Netanyahu. “And if it indicates a change in position, we welcome it very much.”

But Bar-Illan called the Hamas leader’s conditions--a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the dismantling of Jewish settlements and the release of all Palestinian prisoners--”totally unacceptable.”

In comments to reporters in Gaza City, Yassin and other senior Hamas leaders also emphasized that the group, whose suicide bombings have killed scores of Israelis, is not proposing a permanent reconciliation with Israel.

“If Israel redeploys from Gaza and the West Bank completely and hands [the territories] and [East] Jerusalem to the Palestinians and releases the prisoners . . . in such case we will stop the military attacks,” Yassin said. “But it is just a temporary cease-fire.”

Abdel Aziz Rantissi, a Hamas political leader and close aide to Yassin, added that the movement reserves the right to “continue the struggle against Israel to free all Palestinian land,” a reference to present-day Israel.

Israeli and Palestinian officials and political analysts are watching Yassin’s words and actions for signs of what role he will play within Hamas and in the group’s relations with the Palestinian Authority and with Israel. He is expected to reinvigorate Hamas and pose a formidable leadership challenge to Arafat.

Yassin’s comments Tuesday offered little hint of his future role.

“He’s talking about a cease-fire now, but he is not saying Hamas is giving up the armed struggle totally,” said Menachem Klein, a political scientist at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University.

Yassin was freed in a deal worked out between Israel and Jordan’s King Hussein after Israeli intelligence operatives bungled an assassination attempt against another Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, two weeks ago in Amman, the Jordanian capital. The attack infuriated Hussein, who signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has remained its friendliest Arab ally.

*

Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammallah contributed to this report from Gaza City.