Barak battles for political life while Palestinians die

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak prepared to face Parliament with his political life on the line today while Israeli troops battled Palestinian protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.

Barak had hoped to arrive in the Knesset, when it returned from its three-month recess, with a coalition including hawkish right-wing leader Ariel Sharon that could unite against Palestinian protests.

Barak and Sharon failed to forge a partnership yesterday as Israeli troops shot dead five Palestinians, bringing to 145 the total number of dead in a month of bloodshed. All but eight of the dead are Arabs.

Clashes began on September 28 following Sharon's visit to Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine on a site revered by Jews as the site of ancient temples.

Likud legislator Meir Sheetrit and cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer met yesterday to try to form a coalition, although some of Israel's closest allies have warned that uniting with Sharon's Likud is likely to kill peacemaking.

Sharon has said that should Barak fail to accept his terms for a unity government, Israel will have to hold a new election - perhaps by early 2001. Barak also faces the threat of a bid by Parliament to call an early election.

Barak's 30-member coalition is far short of the 68-52 majority he assembled after a landslide May 1999 victory. Three parties bolted on the eve of United States-brokered peace talks at Camp David in July, fearing Barak would make far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians.

The talks collapsed when Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat failed to agree on the thorniest issues in their 52-year-old conflict, above all the future of Jerusalem, which both want as their capital.

Sharon has said he would not join a Government that would hold peace talks with the Palestinians based on land concessions considered at Camp David. Sharon is reviled by Arabs for the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Israel's allies during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Barak has called a time-out in the peace process, demanding Arafat halt the violence he has said the Palestinian leader is fomenting in order to win world support for a unilateral declaration of statehood.

Barak vowed his left-centre Labour Party would not abandon its bid for peace with the Palestinians, even in a coalition with Likud.

US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said the US, which has been the chief mediator in seven years of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, would continue working towards a final peace.

"Over the past seven-and-a-half years we've had experience working with both left-wing Governments and right-wing Governments and we've been able to find a way to make progress," Indyk told Israel's Army radio. "When the left and right come together I still believe that the imperative for finding a way to live together is still there."

President Bill Clinton would try to end the violence before the US presidential elections on November 7.

Arafat said his people would continue their "blessed Intifada (uprising) ... until a boy or a girl holds the flag of Palestine over Jerusalem, the capital of our Palestinian state."

- REUTERS

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