Soldier buried as leaders meet in last-ditch bid for Mideast peace

PETAH TIKVA - Eight-year-old Shani Avrahami looked down at the gaping hole into which red-bereted soldiers were lowering her father's body yesterday and cried "No! ... Dad!"

Thunder boomed, warning that the skies would soon unleash their wrath on the hundreds of people who had gathered to bury Yosef Avrahami, whose lynching by a mob of Palestinians in the West Bank last week triggered a political meltdown in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and key players including United States President Bill Clinton, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah last night gathered in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for a summit aimed at stopping the violence sinking the peace process. Joining them were the United Nations chief Kofi Annan and the European Union's top diplomat Javier Solana.

Avrahami and Vadim Novesche, who was buried at the weekend, were stabbed and beaten to death after straying into a Palestinian checkpoint on their way to reserve duty. Israel responded by blasting Palestinian buildings at Ramallah and Gaza with helicopter gunships.

"We cannot afford to fail," Annan said of what is widely seen as a last-ditch bid to save nine years of negotiations. But Clinton and the others say they have few illusions about the chances of success at their meeting.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said they would first seek a truce, then ways to prevent a recurrence of the violence, and a way back to the negotiations.

In Gaza City, the political head of the fundamentalist Hamas Islamic resistance, Ismael Abu Shanab, blasted the summit as "totally useless" and warned that the Palestinian uprising would continue regardless.

Demonstrations were staged in the West Bank, Lebanon and Egypt yesterday and new incidents also cast shadows over the summit.

Gunmen in Jordan shot and wounded two Israeli soldiers across the border in what was considered an extremely rare occurence.

An Israeli Embassy source said the shots slightly wounded two Israeli border guards north of the West Bank city of Jericho.

The Israeli Defence Ministry confirmed that an Israeli businessman had been kidnapped after the Hizbollah group in Lebanon claimed to have captured an Israeli colonel.

Swiss police were investigating whether the man may have gone missing in Switzerland.

Barak said that a private Israeli citizen, a businessman, had apparently been kidnapped. Barak denied rumours the missing man worked for intelligence services or the Army.

Media reports circulating in Switzerland said the man, aged 54, worked for arms companies Tadiran and Rafael and could have been kidnapped some 10 days ago in Lausanne.

Barak's office earlier gave the name of the missing man as Elhanan Tenenbaum. Israel's Channel Two television said the man apparently was taken captive 12 days ago by unspecified Arabs with whom he had business contacts after a dispute over money. It said they then handed him over to Hizbollah after the guerrillas snatched three Israeli soldiers at the border last week.

Molotov cocktails were thrown into a Jewish butcher's shop in the centre of the southern French town of Toulon yesterday, as attacks on synagogues and Jewish buildings continued. There have been more than 20 attacks against Jewish buildings across France.

Thirteen soccer fans were arrested after a Jerusalem crowd chanted anti-Arab slogans at a soccer match including "Death to the Arabs" as others held a banner threatening two Israeli Arab MPs. The 13 fans were released after interrogation. Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police would recommend charging them with incitement to violence and disturbing the peace.

At Avrahami's funeral yesterday in Petah Tikva, a rabbi chanted mournfully as the funeral procession gathered around the grave in the drizzle. Shani Avrahami wrapped her arms tightly around a soldier's shoulders, crying "No, no, no."

Soldiers lined up to shovel earth over Yosef, father of Shani and 5-year-old twin boys, Idan and Roi.

Israel's chief rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, stood over Avrahami's grave and recalled his brother telling him they would go to Israel when they were liberated from the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp at the end of the Second World War.

"I asked why, and he said 'Because that's the only place in the world where they don't kill Jews'," Lau said.

"But this war isn't over. We are still in a place where Jews are killed just because they are Jews."

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Middle East Daily

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Arabic Media Internet Network

Jerusalem Post

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US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process