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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Barak reissues military warning as deadline nears
Israeli says deal is possible
but Arafat must act now
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
JERUSALEM, Oct. 8 — As darkness fell Sunday on a tense and agitated
Middle East, Israel’s Jews began observing Yom Kippur — the holiest day of
their calendar and a period set aside for fasting and contemplation — while
counting the hours to the deadline set by Prime Minister Ehud Barak for the
end of violence in the region. Earlier, Barak repeated his warning of
unspecified stepped-up military action if the fighting doesn’t end by sundown
Monday while also offering the prospect of the resumption of peace talks.
October 8, 2000
With a showdown looming over the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak says his forces are ready to fight unless Yasser Arafat calls a halt to
the violence. NBC’s Ron Allen reports.
THE PALESTINIANS again rejected Barak’s ultimatum. “If [the peace
process] is dead, it has been killed by Mr. Barak,” Palestinian Information
Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Barak said there was “light at
the end of the tunnel.
“There is an agreement within our reach, put on the table through the
ideas of President Clinton at Camp David, and it’s up to [Palestinian
Authority] Chairman [Yasser] Arafat to make up his mind and to choose,
whether he wants to have an agreement.
“We can have it. It might take a few weeks to formalize a kind of
framework agreement and maybe a few months, at most, to detail it to the last
letter.”
But Barak also repeated his warning of Saturday that Israel was ready
to take tougher measures against the Palestinians if the fighting isn’t
halted by the end of Yom Kippur.
Images from the recent violence.
“If [Arafat] chooses, under these circumstances, to go to violence,
it means that somehow, on a most profound level, he prefers confrontation
than peace, and he has to bear the responsibility for it, in the minds of
honest people all around the world,” Barak said.
The Palestinians said it was up to the Israelis to stop the shooting
and laid down their own condition: accept a U.N. Security Council call for an
international commission to investigate the violence.
Nabil Aburdeneh, Arafat’s chief adviser, echoed Barak’s challenge,
giving the Israelis 24 hours to stop shooting. He said that Russian Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov would visit the region Monday — Russia is a permanent
Security Council member — and that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan might
come soon.
U.S. MAY ORGANIZE SUMMIT
Clinton, trying to prevent his Mideast policy from disintegrating,
spoke by phone to Barak and Arafat over the weekend and proposed the
possibility of convening a summit in Egypt as early as this week. When asked
if Clinton would attend, an administration official told NBC that he wouldn’t
rule out the possibility that the president would participate in the
trilateral talks.
More than 80 people, most of them Palestinian, have been killed in 11
days of rock-throwing riots and gun battles with Israeli troops that began
Sept. 28 when Ariel Sharon, the leader of the hard-line Likud opposition
bloc, visited a Jerusalem shrine holy to Muslims and Jews.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, appearing earlier on “Meet
the Press,” said, “We have to do everything we can not to be at the brink of
war in the Middle East.”
She said she understands Barak’s “incredible sense of frustration”
but said: “We need to try to break the violence. That just hasn’t happened.
... There has to be disengagement.”
While U.S. officials tried to assess their next step, news came that
an American-born rabbi was found shot to death in a cave in the West Bank.
Israeli soldiers on Sunday found the body of Jewish settler Rabbi Hillel
Lieberman in a cave near a West Bank highway.
“He was shot by Palestinians,” said police spokesman Rafi Yafe.
U.S. Jewish groups released a statement which said Lieberman had been
on his way to Joseph’s Tomb, the site ransacked by Palestinians, to try and
save some of the Torah scrolls housed in the tomb. Lieberman was apparently
killed on his way there. A statement issued by two officials of the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald
Lauder and Malcolm Hoenlein, called on Clinton “to hold Chairman Arafat
personally responsible for the brutal death of Rabbi Hillel Lieberman.”
RISING TENSION
As the crisis deepened in Israel, parallels were being drawn to Yom
Kippur of 1973, when Arab armies launched a surprise attack on Israel.
Parliament Speaker Avraham Burg said that while the war 27 years ago
taught Israel a lesson about the limits of force, “in days like these, we
should wake up — maybe there is a limit to the power of peace.”
Earlier, while touring the border with Lebanon, Barak was briefed on
the capture of three soldiers by Hezbollah Lebanese guerrillas the day
before. Barak said he held Syria ultimately responsible for ensuring calm on
the border.
Barak declined to elaborate on the measures Israel would take to stop
the violence, but his national security adviser, Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, said
troops would no longer just react. “We could ... as far as I am concerned,
even attack the headquarters of those responsible for the situation,” Dayan
told Israel radio.
Israel was already ratcheting up the pressure. Before dawn Sunday,
the Israeli military blew up two multi-story apartment buildings overlooking
the Netzarim junction in Gaza that has been the focus of riots and gun
battles. In addition, the military destroyed another nearby building known as
“the factory” and cleared an area of several dozen yards around the
fortified position to prevent attacks, the statement said.
In the West Bank, the Israelis sent attack helicopters into Hebron for
the first time, blasting hilltop positions used by Palestinians to fire on
the Jewish settler enclave below.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, an Israeli army commander advised
Palestinians in houses near the Jewish settlement of Psagot to leave their
homes.
SIGNS OF ACCORD
In a sign of possible conciliation, an Israeli commander met with
Palestinian security officials at a meeting led by CIA officials.
Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Samia said an understanding was emerging with the
Palestinians on four points: a cease-fire, an opening of the roads near
Netzarim, an end to broadcast incitement on official Palestinian media and a
stop to the release of radicals from Palestinian prisons.
October 8, 2000
Tim Russert speaks to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright about the hope for peace in Israel.
“There is an agreement to stop the violence,” a Palestinian
security official said as police tried to put children on trucks at Netzarim
to keep them away from the volatile intersection.
The Palestinian Authority issued a statement saying Israel, the
Palestinians and the United States had agreed to run a joint operation room
for resolving Gaza security issues.
But four previous attempts to halt the unrest have failed.
MORE DEATHS
The Israeli army said a settler shot dead a Palestinian near Bidiya
village in the West Bank overnight. Voice of Palestine radio said the man,
23, was shot twice in the head.
Police said a 55-year-old Israeli motorist died after being severely
wounded by a rock hurled at his car as it passed near the northern Arab
village of Jisr al-Zarka.
In the Gaza Strip, gunmen opened fire on an Israeli bus, wounding nine
passengers, two of them seriously, and prompting Israel to close the
Palestinian international airport, from where it said the shots came.
The passengers were Israeli security workers who had finished their
shift at the Rafah border crossing and the airport. In response, Barak
decided that only Arafat’s plane could land there.
The order drew criticism from Palestinians, who regard the airport as
a symbol of emerging statehood.
Under interim peace deals signed by Israel and the Palestinians,
Israel has overall responsibility for security at the airport, where Israeli
airport officials say there are more than 20 flights a week.
TIBERIAS MOSQUE BURNED
In the Israeli town of Tiberias, home to one of the kidnapped Israeli
soldiers, hundreds of residents chanted “Death to the Arabs” and set fire to
a mosque that local Arabs had hoped to renovate and reopen for use.
Hezbollah refused Sunday to allow a Red Cross envoy to visit the three
prisoners, demanding a start to negotiations for a prisoner swap with Israel,
officials close to the discussions said from Beirut. Prime Minister Salim
Hoss and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were conducting diplomatic efforts
over the issue.
Tensions between Israel’s Arab and Jewish resident have been running
high since violence erupted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip 11 days ago
and then spread to Arab communities in Israel. For several days last week,
Arab rock throwers clashed with Israeli riot police, and 10 Israeli Arabs
were killed. An Israeli Jew died Sunday after he was hit by a rock as he
drove on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway.
The protests led to the closing of a number of major roads, and many
Jewish residents felt besieged and threatened by their Arab neighbors, who,
in turn, have long complained of discrimination at the hands of Israeli
governments.
Sunday, Tiberias Mayor Benjamin Qiryati visited the 200-year-old
el-Omari mosque, walking around smoldering embers and burned scraps of wood
on the now-blackened stone floor. The mayor said he does not condone attacks
on any holy site but said his people’s anger is too much to contain.
“When one of the sons of a Tiberias family is kidnapped and another
resident is taken out of his car and beaten up by Arabs and we can’t even
travel on the surrounding roads, there’s a feeling that action needs to be
taken,” he said. “It would be strange if people weren’t enraged right now.”
Also late Sunday, several hundred Jewish settlers attacked Israeli
Arabs’ homes in the Nazareth, killing at least one Israeli Arab, Mayor Ramez
Jaraiseh said.
U.S. ABSTAINS FROM VOTE
The U.N. Security Council, in passing a resolution Saturday that
condemned Israel’s “excessive use of force” in recent days, made reference
to Sharon’s trip to the shrine - revered by Jews as Temple Mount and to
Muslims as Noble Sanctuary, or Haram al-Sharif - deploring the visit as
“provocation.”
Israel says Sharon had a right to visit the compound.
Clinton personally asked for a delay in the vote early Saturday after
a final draft resolution was offered that the United States said it had
little choice but to veto.
Saying the United States still has “extreme distaste” for the resolution,
U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said the decision to abstain was made at
the highest levels of the U.S. government because the Clinton administration
believes it would be better able to serve U.S. national interests and deal
with the “great dangers that exist in the region today.”
The Palestinian U.N. observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said the resolution
contains “extremely important elements,” including the implicit references
to Israel’s excessive use of force and Sharon’s provocation.
“I hope that it will have a positive impact on the actual situation
on the ground, and I hope that it will be positive also for the peace process
as a whole,” he said.
The United States had tried to head off the resolution altogether,
arguing that any council action would only jeopardize delicate peace
negotiations under way to try to end the bloodshed and salvage the peace
process.
Washington has traditionally tried to keep Mideast issues outside of
the council’s domain.
Israelis — even the most dovish among them — rejected the Security
Council statement, saying it resurrected the organization’s bias against the
Jewish state.
“It happened that we survived the harsh language of the U.N. many
times in the past,” said Avraham Burg, the speaker of the Israeli Parliament.
“If they want to continue with their rhetoric, it’s beautiful, it’s no
problem, but at some point it will become irrelevant.”
In truth, Israelis were sorely disappointed that the United States did
not vote rather than using its veto to quash the statement.
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