Egypt seeks ways to end Middle East carnage

JERUSALEM - Middle East diplomacy shifted last night to Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak and a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak hoped to explore ways of ending two months of bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza.

But even as the talks unfolded, the violence spread to the Israeli border with Lebanon when a roadside bomb wounded three Israeli soldiers - and Israeli warplanes retaliated in a rare cross-border attack.

Syrian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon claimed responsibility for the bomb at Har Dov, in the disputed Shebaa Farms area.

Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah had said on Saturday that fighting was the only way to regain Shebaa Farms, captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Egyptian meeting, between Mubarak and Israeli Danny Yatom, comes less than a week after Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv and accused the Jewish state of aggression towards Palestinians.

Mubarak was quoted in a Kuwaiti newspaper as saying he opposed an Egyptian war against Israel or imposing an Arab oil embargo on the West in order to pressure Israel to end its conflict with the Palestinians.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was in Cairo at the weekend to brief Mubarak on his recent talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Palestinians want a bigger peace role for Russia to counterbalance the United States, with its perceived pro-Israeli bias.

Reports last night said Arafat also met an Israeli cabinet minister and a former Israeli spymaster secretly in the Gaza Strip yesterday to try to end the bloodshed.

Israeli sources said minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a former Army chief, and Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service known for his contacts with Palestinian officials, met the Palestinian leader at Prime Minister Ehud Barak's behest.

Arafat had earlier said he hoped the flurry of diplomatic activity would go some way towards ending the violence that has cost 274 lives, mostly Palestinian, and left the peace process in tatters.

But as he spoke the death toll mounted. Hospital sources said the Israeli Army killed four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank despite a deal between the sides to restore some security cooperation.

It was also unclear whether Israel would lift its eight-week-old blockade of Palestinian cities today, the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Witnesses said Israeli forces yesterday fired grenades at Palestinian National Security offices in Gaza and at Rafah, on the Egyptian border. There were no reports of wounded. Gunfire was heard in the West Bank town of Ramallah, and in Hebron, but no casualties were reported.

Arab ministers holding an emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo declared their support for the Palestinian uprising, calling it a "legal fight to obtain rights" in the face of Israeli aggression.

- 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