Palestinians, Israelis deal blows to U.S. peace plan

10:00 AM

JERUSALEM - An estimated 100,000 Israelis have rallied against ceding any control to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, dealing a further blow to President Clinton's slim hopes of clinching a last-gasp peace deal.

Palestinian negotiators had earlier rejected the outgoing U.S. leader's proposals, saying they were copies of Israel's blueprint for ending the 52-year-old conflict.

"(Jerusalem) was the centre of our dreams, of our prayers and of our struggle. It is the heart of our people and we cannot give away our heart," said right-wing Israeli legislator Natan Sharansky, one of the organisers of the torchlit rally.

Israel's Channel Two said more than 100,000 people took part in the demonstration under the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. Police gave no estimate.

While the peacemaking stalemate continued, more violence flared.

A Palestinian died in hospital after being hit by Israeli gunfire in an incident near the West Bank town of Nablus in which Palestinians threw rocks at Jewish settlers, Palestinian officials said. The Israeli army was checking the account.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian gunmen fired at an Israeli car along a road leading from Jerusalem to the Jewish settlement of Givat Zeev in the West Bank, wounding an Israeli child, the army said.

Palestinian gunfire hit an apartment building in Gilo on the edge of Jerusalem but caused no casualties in the first attack on the settlement in a month.

At least 304 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 43 other Israelis have been killed in the last three months of violence.

Clinton had called on both sides to make a "long leap" over the gaping Israeli-Palestinian divide as he went public on Sunday with his five "parameters" for a fair deal.

"It will entail real pain and sacrifices for both sides, but the benefits of agreement far outweigh them," Clinton, who leaves office on January 20 after eight years, told the Israeli Policy Forum in New York.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters at the United Nations there would be no letup in efforts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal even in the closing days of Clinton's administration.

"Dennis Ross is going out tomorrow (Tuesday) and he is going to do everything he can to narrow the differences," she said, referring to the veteran U.S. peace envoy due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

But the flag-waving crowds in Jerusalem were implacably opposed to a central plank of Clinton's proposed settlement - giving Palestinians control of Arab areas in Jerusalem and sharing access to the city's holy sites.

"Don't be the first president in the history of your country to propose the division of the historical and eternal capital of the Jewish people," Ehud Olmert, Israel's right-wing mayor of Jerusalem, told the rally.

Passions are heating up in Israel ahead of a prime ministerial election on February 6, amid perceptions that the centrist incumbent, Barak, is prepared to concede partial sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Most of the demonstrators at the rally were from Israel's political and religious right.

"Jerusalem is David's city, not Arafat's," read one poster brandished at the holy city's ancient walls, referring to the biblical King David and to the Palestinian leader.

"The Temple Mount is Ours," read another poster, underlining an Israeli claim to the site of the biblical Jewish Temples.

The compound is also one of Islam's holiest sites, al-Haram al-Sharif. It houses the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques revered by Muslims as the site from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City and sensitive holy sites, in the 1967 Middle East war and regards all of the city as its capital. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

The city's police chief had deployed thousands of officers and said he would crack down hard on troublemakers - whether Jews or Arabs.

But the mood at the rally was festive and defiant. A Jewish boys' choir wearing skull-caps sang Gloria Gaynor's 1970s disco hymn "I Will Survive."

Arafat had no immediate public reaction to Clinton's speech but his senior aides dismissed hopes of a breakthrough, saying the plan favoured Israel.

"We can't accept Clinton's ideas as a basis for future negotiations or a future settlement. Clinton didn't take Arafat's reservations into account and these ideas don't offer our people their legitimate rights," senior negotiator Ahmed Korei told Reuters.

Senior Palestinian officials said Clinton's ideas were identical to Israeli proposals presented to Palestinian negotiators in Washington late last month.

For its part, Israel reiterated Barak's acceptance of the proposals earlier this month as a basis for peace talks.

Clinton said the proposals, presented to the Israelis and the Palestinians two weeks ago, would give the Palestinians full control of almost all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, send an international force to secure Israel's borders and deny Palestinian refugees the right of return to Israel.

- REUTERS

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