Israelis Kill Palestinian, Raze Dozens of Gaza Homes

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian and razed dozens of homes Saturday in a Gaza Strip refugee camp as the Palestinians put off naming a new security chief to help direct Middle East peace moves.

Witnesses in Rafah, a camp on Gaza’s border with Egypt, said Israeli forces killed a 19-year-old Palestinian and demolished 42 homes, although it was not immediately clear how many of these were individual buildings.

A military spokesman said the dead man was armed and that five buildings used by militants to fire on troops were demolished, as were three others that were being used to conceal tunnels used for gunrunning.

Israeli forces stormed into Rafah late last week, in one of the deepest incursions into Gaza in recent months.

As the violence continued, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his prime minister, Ahmed Korei, met in the West Bank city of Ramallah but failed to settle on an interior minister in charge of security forces for their emergency Cabinet formed last week, Palestinian officials said. The deepening dispute is threatening to bring down Korei’s nascent administration.

Despite the disarray within the Palestinian administration, Israeli opposition politicians and Palestinian officials sought to revive peace talks Saturday in meetings in Jordan being held without the backing of the Israeli government.

About 40 Israeli opposition politicians, human rights activists and former Palestinian Cabinet ministers had been expected to issue a declaration emphasizing that peace and greater Palestinian-Israeli cooperation is the only way to stabilize the Middle East. But Samir Rantisi, an advisor to the Palestinian delegation, told reporters late Saturday that no such statement would be issued.

Atta Khairi, deputy chief of the Jordan-based Palestinian Mission, said the talks were being chaired by Israeli Labor Party leader Yossi Beilin and Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo.

Khairi said the talks were a bid to revive peace negotiations based on earlier talks and a plan proposed in July 2000 by President Clinton at a meeting of Palestinian and Israeli leaders at Camp David.

That plan outlined a proposal for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and about 95% of the West Bank as well as parts of East Jerusalem, including limited sovereignty over a Muslim shrine that abuts the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

Talks on that plan had broken off without agreement in January 2001, after Clinton had left office.

The revived discussions opened Friday at a resort hotel on the shores of the Dead Sea and were expected to continue today.