Latest Mideast Talks End With No Breakthrough

U.S. envoy Dennis B. Ross on Saturday ended his latest effort to break the 18-month Israeli-Palestinian deadlock, claiming progress but no real breakthrough.

And as so often happens in Israel, tension and fear shadowed what was supposed to be a festive occasion: the Jewish New Year holiday, beginning at sundown today.

In the West Bank--whose border with Israel was sealed off, along with that of the Gaza Strip--thousands of Palestinian supporters of the radical Islamic group Hamas staged a march Saturday, burning U.S. and Israeli flags and screaming, “Revenge, revenge!”

Ross headed back to the United States after an 11-day visit to the region apparently empty-handed except for hopes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat might try to meet in the United States this week.

Ross met with Arafat for nearly two hours Saturday night in Gaza and told reporters afterward: “We have made some headway, but there is still work to be done.”

Later, he held a final session with Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The prime minister’s spokesman, Aviv Bushinsky, said progress was made, but he provided no details.

Arafat said he would not object to meeting Netanyahu when both are in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, but said no session had been set. Bushinsky, too, said Netanyahu did not rule out such a meeting but added that “we shall see in the next few days if it is practical.”

In the American-brokered talks, the two sides have been trying to reach agreement on a long-delayed Israeli troop withdrawal from 13% of the West Bank land and on revised terms of a Palestinian crackdown on Islamic militants.

Saturday, in the West Bank town of Hebron, more than 3,000 supporters of Hamas rallied, waving green Hamas flags and singing nationalistic songs. Palestinian police did not interfere with the march, staged in a Palestinian-controlled area.

Hamas has vowed to avenge the Sept. 10 killings of brothers Imad and Adel Awadallah, top fugitives who were shot dead by Israeli troops in a bloody raid on their West Bank hide-out.