Talks Fail to Halt Mideast Violence

Deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians continued Thursday after security chiefs from the two sides met at U.S.-sponsored talks but failed to agree on how to halt their fighting.

A Palestinian farmer and a 14-year-old Palestinian boy were shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and an Israeli soldier was wounded by automatic gunfire along a road in the West Bank.

In Ramallah, Palestinian security forces said a car bomb apparently targeting a Palestinian activist blew up after police moved it to a safe location. No one was hurt, but Palestinians accused Israel of trying to orchestrate an assassination.

The tone on both sides hardened a day after Israeli tanks and bulldozers razed a neighborhood in a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza. Two Palestinians were killed in the assault, which Israel said came in response to persistent Palestinian mortar attacks on Jewish settlements. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatened to send troops into Palestinian territory again if attacks on Israelis do not stop.

“All those who carry out terror attacks, those who act as accomplices and those who support them need to know they will not be able to live in peace,” Sharon told the Maariv daily newspaper, in an interview published Thursday.

Palestinians issued warnings of their own.

“The Palestinian Authority has not yet used all its tools in response to Israeli aggression,” Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo said at a news conference in Ramallah.

Palestinian security sources, insisting on anonymity, said the car bomb in Ramallah was aimed at Nasser abu Hamaid, commander of a militia in the Amari refugee camp. The militia is affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization.

Talks between the two sides late Wednesday night at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Israel failed to end the latest outbreak of violence. Abed-Rabbo said the steps Israel agreed to were considered inadequate by the Palestinians.

Another round of security talks was set for Monday.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah Khatib met with Arafat on Thursday and said afterward that a Jordanian-Egyptian proposal aimed at renewing peace talks “was alive and well despite all the difficulties.”

Israel has been cool to the proposal, under which peace negotiations would resume after former President Clinton’s cease-fire deal is implemented and Israel declares a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion.