U.S., Europe Pressure Mideast Leaders to Maintain Cease-Fire

U.S. officials, eager to see calm in the Middle East as they seek a global anti-terrorism alliance, struggled Thursday to hold Israelis and Palestinians to a fragile cease-fire that was threatened by shootings and rising political opposition.

Palestinian gunmen early Thursday opened fire on a family of Jewish settlers traveling near Tekoa, a settlement in the West Bank. A 26-year-old mother of three was killed and her husband badly wounded. Their two toddlers and 4-month-old infant, who were riding in the car’s back seat, witnessed their mother’s death but escaped injury.

Five Israeli soldiers and a civilian security guard were injured in shootings in the Gaza Strip later Thursday, and Palestinian officials reported one Palestinian killed by Israeli fire in Gaza.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat on Tuesday declared a wide-ranging cease-fire, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded by pulling back troops from some Palestinian territory and halting military offensives.

Both were under enormous U.S. and European pressure to defuse the conflict, which has killed about 800 people in the last year. Yet no sooner had hopes of a breakthrough arisen than new violence put the efforts in doubt.

“I am very sorry that the Palestinian Authority has not honored its [cease-fire] pledge,” Sharon said Thursday. In the evening, he convened his Cabinet to decide whether Israel will continue to uphold its end of the bargain. Also up for debate was whether his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, will be allowed to meet with Arafat--a move that U.S. officials have been urging since the Sept. 11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Bush administration desperately wants a truce here to clear the way for moderate Arab and Muslim states to join a U.S.-led alliance that will fight terrorism. Arab regimes will be reluctant to join if Israeli-Palestinian violence is raging, diplomats say.

In an attempt to show his willingness to cooperate, Arafat took the unusual step of telephoning and promising Peres and U.S. Consul General Ronald Schlicher that he will hunt and arrest the shooters in the Tekoa slaying. The gunmen were seen heading toward Bethlehem, a biblical city that is under Palestinian control.

Arafat needs to give at least the appearance of making every attempt to enforce a cease-fire, even as many of his own gunmen say they oppose it. And it is not known whether radical Islamic groups responsible for recent suicide bombings here will adhere to the truce.

Arafat’s actions, and Sharon’s to a lesser extent, are in large part a result of an unusual flurry of U.S. diplomatic activity. In the nine days following the attacks in the U.S., Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had 19 telephone conversations with Sharon, Arafat and Peres in an attempt to elicit their cooperation, according to American sources.

This represents a marked shift from the Bush administration’s previous “hands-off” approach to Middle East peacemaking. An account offered Thursday provided insight into the American actions here as part of the broader, emerging war effort. It also revealed a new American impatience with Sharon, who has enjoyed wide administration support.

As the Americans pressed their case, Arafat quickly realized that he would be viewed as being on the wrong side of the fight against terrorism if he continued to prosecute the year-old Palestinian uprising, diplomatic sources said.

“I think it shook him up,” a Western diplomat said. “He realized that this [the uprising] has got to change or he would be seen as part of the problem.”

Sharon presented a tougher case for Powell and the Americans, the diplomat said.

“I don’t think he yet sees an opportunity,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “The mistrust is still deep enough that he sees it as a problem rather than the other way around. He wants Arafat to undo what he’s done in the last year.”

Last Friday, President Bush spoke to Sharon by telephone, imploring him to allow truce talks between Peres and Arafat. Sharon flatly refused. But two days later, apparently aware that he had gone too far in snubbing Bush at a time of crisis, Sharon offered to call off Israel’s military offensives and eventually allow talks to go ahead.

“The prime minister doesn’t see things exactly the way [administration officials] do,” the Western diplomat said. American officials “conveyed the message that this administration is working with you and wants to continue working with you, but life for us has changed.”

Sharon called Powell in the predawn hours Thursday to complain that the Palestinians were not upholding the cease-fire, and both spoke again Thursday afternoon. Sharon had not called off the cease-fire late in the day but signaled that it was in jeopardy, the diplomat said.

Overall, violence has ebbed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the killing of the settler will enormously complicate Sharon’s political situation, stirring a backlash from his right-wing constituents.

Hard-line members of Sharon’s government attended the funeral for the settler, Sarit Amrani, on Thursday and demanded that the prime minister refuse to observe a cease-fire and instead retaliate harshly.

Israeli commentators blasted Sharon on Thursday either for caving in to foreign pressure, or for initially miscalculating the American mood and believing that events in the U.S. gave him a green light to open fierce offensives on the Palestinians. Last week, Israel carried out its deadliest, deepest incursions into Palestinian territory while American attention was focused elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said Thursday that they were doing their best to enforce the cease-fire and that it would take time to silence all the weapons. They called for a lifting of the stifling closures that Israel has imposed on most Palestinian towns.

Israeli officials said they remained convinced that Arafat had no real intention of renouncing violence. All previous cease-fires in the last year of conflict have collapsed.