Amid violence in the Middle East, words of goodwill

JERUSALEM - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat delivered a goodwill message to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the Jewish Passover holiday after a week of violence in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel Radio said Arafat called Sharon by telephone to wish the Jewish people a happy holiday and also invited leftist Mertez party leader Yossi Sarid to meet him in the next few days.

A Palestinian official said Arafat also spoke with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and expressed hope that stalled peace talks would resume.

Sharon's office said his response to Arafat's gesture on the eve of Passover, which commemorates the Israelites' biblical exodus from Egypt, was guarded and Sharon took the opportunity to reiterate his demand that violence stop before peace talks restart.

The conversation came on a day of confrontations in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli Army reported shooting yesterday near Ramallah and the Jewish settlements of Psagot and Ariel in the West Bank.

Witnesses said Israeli tanks fired within Palestinian-ruled Ramallah, as well as at Palestinian targets near the Jewish settlements of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip after mortar bombs slammed into the area.

Hospital officials said five Palestinians were wounded, one seriously, from burns sustained from the tank fire.

Troops earlier fired rubber-coated metal bullets to disperse around 200 stone and bottle-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank town of Hebron who blocked the road to nearby Bethlehem.

The Arafat-Sharon conversation followed Israeli-Palestinian security talks earlier in the week that failed to stem the violence between the two sides.

An Israeli undercover Army unit seized two Palestinians on Saturday in an Israeli-ruled area in Ramallah. The Army said they were activists from Arafat's Fatah faction suspected of shooting at Israeli citizens and soldiers. Fatah said the men had been "kidnapped." Around 70 children near the Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing set fire to a box representing peace talks with Israel.

At Gaza's checkpoint with Israel, around 100 Palestinian doctors marched to condemn what they called Israel's "excessive use of power."

United Arab Emirates Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Sultan bin Zaid al-Nahayan urged United States action to protect Palestinians against Israeli attacks and said failure to act was morally and politically wrong, the Gulf state's official WAM news agency reported.

At least 369 Palestinians, 71 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that erupted in September.

Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper at the weekend that he still saw Arafat as a peace "partner" and the goal of Israel's military operations was to bring him back to the negotiating table.

- REUTERS

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