Barak tries to mend fences with Israeli Arabs

3:00 PM

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Barak has paid a fence-mending visit to an Israeli Arab town, getting a headstart in an election campaign that opinion polls show could return right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu to power.

Political commentators say the police killing of 13 Israeli Arabs during protests that erupted in the Galilee in September in tandem with a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza is likely to cost Barak the crucial Arab vote.

"I'm simply urging everyone to get over it ... we must restore this connection (between Arab and Jewish Israelis)," Barak, eating dinner on Saturday at a restaurant in the northern Arab town of Tira, said in broadcast remarks.

Israeli media described the visit as the kickoff of the Labour Party leader's election campaign.

Israeli Arabs make up about 20 per cent of the population of the Jewish state and voted overwhelmingly for Barak in his 1999 landslide victory over then-Prime Minister Netanyahu of the Likud.

Barak, who lost his ruling majority before last July's inconclusive Camp David peace summit with the Palestinians, bowed on Tuesday to pressure in parliament and agreed to an early election, widely expected to be held in May.

Netanyahu, due back on Sunday from a lecture tour in the United States, has not said whether he would challenge current Likud chief Ariel Sharon for the party leadership and seek a rematch with Barak.

But Netanyahu, ending a self-imposed time-out from politics, has given showcase interviews to Israeli television in which he has urged Barak to get tougher towards the Palestinians.

A survey published in the Jerusalem Post on Friday showed Netanyahu had widened his lead over Barak and would receive 47 per cent of the vote to the prime minister's 25 per cent if an election were held now.

Violence continued to flare in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah on Saturday, an Israeli sniper shot dead Shehadeh Ja'afri while the 27-year-old electrician worked with a drill at a building site near a military roadblock, Voice of Palestine Radio said.

The Israeli army first reported that soldiers who shot him had responded to gunfire, but it later said he was targeted because he looked suspicious and was in a building used recently by Palestinian gunmen.

In the Gaza Strip, soldiers shot dead a 21-year-old Palestinian man at a crossing point to Israel, hospital officials said. They identified him as Shadi Abu Harbid from the village of Beit Hanoun and said he was shot in the chest.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said no gunfire was exchanged at the Erez checkpoint.

The deaths raised to 293 the number of people killed in a nine-week-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. Most of the dead are Palestinians.

"We should make no mistake. We are not responsible, nor is the state of Israel responsible, for the fact that we are in a struggle today," Barak said in an interview broadcast on Saturday on Channel Two television.

"We will not allow the other side to achieve anything through violence, but we will not close the window, even for one moment, to the possibility of a peace agreement," he said.

Palestinians, seeking an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, have accused Barak of failing to abide by the terms of interim peace deals and hand over more land to their control.

Barak has floated an idea for a partial peace deal with the Palestinians that would give them a state, annex Jewish settlements to Israel and delay negotiations on Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees for up to three years.

Palestinians quickly rejected the offer as failing to fulfil their key demands and said they were willing to sign only an agreement based on a full Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

Doves in the Labour Party, led by Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, are eager to cut a deal to help Barak hold on to office.

Beilin, speaking after talks in Washington with US National Security adviser Sandy Berger, said United States President Bill Clinton briefly attended the meeting and offered to make another effort to forge an accord before leaving office on January 20.

"I'm all yours," Beilin quoted Clinton as saying.

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: Middle East

Backgrounder: Holy city in grip of past

Map

Middle East Daily

Arabic News

Arabic Media Internet Network

Jerusalem Post

Israel Wire

US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process