Israel Calls Off Truce Talks, Citing Violence

Israel defied the Bush administration and canceled a planned meeting between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat on Sunday meant to cement a fragile cease-fire.

Within hours of the announcement, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he still hopes that Peres and Arafat will meet “in the very near future.” Speaking in Washington, Powell said he had talked with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had assured him the meeting will be rescheduled.

“It’s important now for both sides to do everything they can to create an environment conducive to those talks by getting the violence down,” Powell said.

The administration believes that the resurrection of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations would demonstrate the U.S. commitment to Middle East peacemaking and help bring Arab and Muslim nations into its anti-terrorism coalition. Both Powell and President Bush have appealed to Sharon and Arafat directly to get talks going.

This was the second time Sharon had rebuffed those requests and canceled a planned Peres-Arafat meeting. This time, he did so just hours before it was due to take place in the Gaza Strip.

The move triggered a coalition crisis, with the dovish Peres angrily threatening to quit the government, accusing it of failing to come to the aid of Israel’s most important ally in a moment of need. Earlier in the day, the far-right members of Sharon’s government had threatened to resign if the talks were allowed to go on, saying such a meeting would only hasten Arafat’s inclusion in a worldwide anti-terror coalition that Israel is not being asked to join.

Sharon has made it clear that Israel is not prepared to abandon its demand that 48 hours of quiet must pass before talks can resume.

Palestinian officials on Sunday accused Sharon of sabotaging Peres’ efforts. “This is a gang, not a responsible government of a state,” said Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo. “If Peres asks for a meeting next time, we’ll have to ask him, who do you represent? This shows you cannot trust any promise or agreement the Israelis make.”

Israeli Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar told reporters that Sharon made his decision after Palestinians fired three mortar shells in the Gaza Strip on Saturday night. Two shells hit a Jewish settlement, and one fell inside Israel. No one was injured, but Israeli tanks retaliated by briefly entering the Palestinian-controlled town of Deir al Balah in Gaza. Today, Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli woman in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, the Reuters news service reported Israeli police as saying.

“The prime minister made it clear that he’s not against such meetings when the conditions will be appropriate--when we won’t have mortars on our civilians, on our settlements,” Saar said Sunday.

Saar also criticized the Palestinian Authority for releasing a suspect in the death of Sarit Amrani, a 26-year-old mother of three young children killed as she drove through the West Bank with her family last week.

“The problem here is with steps that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t take,” Saar said. “We are still facing terrorist attacks. Under these conditions, we see it [a Peres-Arafat meeting] as a problem.”

Palestinian West Bank security chief Col. Jibril Rajoub told reporters Sunday that the Palestinian Authority had questioned and released the suspect because it was convinced he was not involved in the attack.

In another move bound to strain the cease-fire, a Jerusalem magistrate issued an arrest warrant Sunday for Marwan Barghouti, a popular West Bank leader of Arafat’s Fatah faction. The government then asked the Palestinian Authority to extradite Barghouti to Israel. The warrant said that Barghouti is suspected of involvement in a series of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Today, the army is expected to create a closed military zone in the northern West Bank along a 19-mile stretch of the pre-1967 border. The zone will range from 11 yards to about two miles wide, said Capt. Jacob Dallal, an army spokesman.

Once the zone is declared, soldiers will be able to arrest anyone inside it who doesn’t live or work there. Dallal said the zone is intended to keep Palestinian suicide bombers from infiltrating Israel. It will also have the effect of blocking thousands of illegal Palestinian workers who have been penetrating the closed border with Israel.

Abed-Rabbo denounced the plan in a rare live interview on Israel Television on Sunday night, saying it would “make parts of the West Bank into a prison within a prison.”

About a week after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority announced that they would observe a cease-fire and would consider returning to negotiations to end a yearlong violence that has claimed about 800 lives.

Abed-Rabbo told Israel Television that there had been a 90% drop in violent incidents since the cease-fire was announced. An Israeli army spokesman said that Sunday was quiet, although there were several shooting incidents the night before, in addition to the mortar attacks.

But in an interview with Fox News Channel on Sunday, Sharon said there had been 88 “incidents of violence” carried out against Israelis by Palestinians since the cease-fire was agreed upon last week. Later, the prime minister issued a statement saying that the nation’s security forces are on high alert after receiving intelligence reports that suicide attacks are being planned within Israel in the coming days.