Powell Seeks to Aid Peace Process

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell affirmed his support Friday for establishing a Palestinian state on land held by Israel and said he was trying to arrange a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to give peacemaking “a jump-start.”

Powell said Israel should give up land for peace, as provided in U.N. Security Council resolutions adopted after the 1967 and 1973 Middle East wars.

A decline in violence could pay off in a reinforced cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians and a start on peacemaking gestures, Powell said in a series of television interviews.

Powell said Israel should reopen its borders to Palestinian workers--which were closed to try to screen out suicide bombers--and he urged Arafat to bring violence “down to zero.”

Powell and Arafat are attending the annual U.N. General Assembly debate. Powell said he would like to meet with the Palestinian leader, but the Palestinian mission to the United Nations said that no such meeting has been scheduled.

In violence Friday, Palestinians opened fire on an Israeli vehicle in the West Bank, killing an Israeli woman, according to settlers and the military. The attack took place near the West Bank town of Jenin, the military said.

The Al Aqsa Brigade, affiliated with Arafat’s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility. A statement from the group said the shooting was in response to a car explosion Tuesday in Jenin that killed two Fatah activists.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man walking in a field a few hundred yards from an Israeli watchtower east of Khan Yunis, Palestinian security officials said.

The army said soldiers fired only after the man ignored both their orders in Arabic and Hebrew not to get any closer and their warning shots in the air. Relatives said the man was mentally disabled and deaf and had not provoked the soldiers.

Israeli soldiers shot a 13-year-old Palestinian boy in the head, critically wounding him, a few hundred yards outside the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekelim in Gaza, Palestinian witnesses and doctors said.

Meanwhile, two Israeli Cabinet ministers and their families left their homes after security services told them of plans by Palestinian militants to attack them, officials said.

Israeli Cabinet minister Danny Naveh, his wife and two small children left their home in the village of Shoham in central Israel, said a neighbor, parliament member Mossi Raz.

Also, media reports said Health Minister Nissim Dahan was told to leave his house on weekends because of intelligence about a possible attack. He lives in Hashmonaim, an Israeli settlement just inside the West Bank.