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heavy Palestinian fire.
On Sunday night, Israeli troops
killed five Palestinian security officers
near Ramalla.h after detecting what the
Israel Defense Force termed "suspicious
activity" The Palestinian Authority
denied the five were involved in hostile
actions and demanded an urgent meet-
ing of the U.N. Security Council to
address the Israeli action.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported
Tuesday that Israel did not know the
identities of the Palestinian officers,
but said the operation was a response
to recent shooting attacks from the
area where they were stationed.
Israeli officials intended the operation
as a signal to the Palestinian Authority
that all its security forces are vulnerable if
their positions are used to attack Israeli
targets, Haaretz reported.

,

'VIOLENCE MARKS 'AL HAIM'

'NAOMI SEGAL

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jerusalem
Tsraeli-Palestinian violence shows no
signs of abating, despite repeated
international calls for a cease-fire.
In a week filled with violence, the
worst came on Tuesday, when thou-
sands of Palestinians took to the streets
to mark "Al Nakba" — Arabic for "the
catastrophe," the Palestinian term for
the creation of the State of Israel.
Capping a day filled with demon-
strations and violence, a Palestinian
gunman shot and killed a 28-year-old
Israeli woman and wounded her
father in a car ambush near the West

Bank city of Ramallah.
Traveling to a wedding in Jerusalem,
the woman was shot in the neck and
failed to regain consciousness, despite
the efforts of medics at the scene.
Earlier Tuesday, at least four
Palestinians were killed and more than
100 wounded in widespread clashes
with Israeli troops in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip.
Among the casualties was a body-
guard for Harnas leader Sheik Ahmed
Yassin, killed by Israeli tank fire after
taking part in a mortar attack launched
from Gaza on a kibbutz in Israel. No
one was hurt in the Palestinian attack.
During Tuesday's demonstrations,
Palestinians stood in silence when a noon-

POWELL HOSTS ARAFAT DEPUTY

MATTHEW E. BERGER

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Washington
U.S. invitation to Palestinian
&Auth ority leader Yasser Arafat is
still not in the offing, but his chief
deputy met this week with Secretary of
State Colin Powell. The meeting repre-
sented the highest-level talks yet
between Bush administration officials
and Palestinian leaders in Washington.
Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu
'N/lazen, requested a meeting with
Powell during his visit to Washington
this week for a medical checkup.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice also attended the meeting.
The Abbas visit is being downplayed
Dy State Department officials, who say
:hey had been expecting him for sever-
months.

The United States has tried to
remain even-handed in its approach to
Israeli-Palestinian violence, but
Palestinian leaders have been notice-
ably absent from the schedules of the
president and secretary of state.
President Clinton invited Arafat to the
White House more often than any
other foreign leader, but Arafat has not
been invited back since President Bush
moved in four months ago.
So far, Bush has welcomed Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres,
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and
Jordanian King Abdullah. State
Department officials said Bush had to
meet with all the Middle East leaders
who have signed permanent peace
agreements with Israel before entertain-
ing Arafat.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority's

he peace with Egypt, seven years after the peace with
ordan, Arabs are less inclined to accept Israel as a
egitimate Jewish state than they had been up until
bLe outbreak last September of the Al-Aksa Intifada.
"The gravest issue is the Palestinian demand to
mplement their so-called Right of Return," said
(ehoshua Porat, professor emeritus at Hebrew
niversity, a leading expert on the history of the
alestinians.
"They have turned May 15 from a day of corn-
emoration into a day of closing ranks for the
uture."
According to Porat, the Palestinians' latest tactic is
o insist on "reopening the 1948 files," including the
emand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to
eturn to what is now Israel.
Not surprisingly, hardly a Palestinian leader will dis-
ree. Hadash Knesset Member Issam Mahoul said
uesday that Israel should accept the Right of Return.
"Its implementation will be subject to negotia-
ons," he added, trying to soften the impact of the
atement for the Jewish listener.

time siren sounded in the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank.
In a prerecorded message broadcast
on Palestinian media while he was
spending the day in Egypt, Palestinian
Authority leader Yasser Arafat said there
would be no peace or stability unless
Israel withdrew all troops and settlers to
the borders that existed before the 1967
Six-Day War, and unless Israel accepted
the "right" of millions of Palestinians to
return to homes they fled in Israel dur-
ing the 1948 war.
The days leading up to Tuesday's
demonstrations were only slightly less
violent.
On Monday, Palestinian gunmen
opened fire on the Jerusalem neigh-
borhood of Gilo from a nearby West
Bank village, injuring four Israelis.
Israeli tanks and troops returned the

chief negotiator and spokesman, Saeb
Erekat, spoke in New York on Tuesday
alongside Yossi Beilin, Israel's former jus-
tice minister and one of its leading doves.
The two discussed the prospects for
resuming peace talks from the point
where they broke off just before Israeli
elections in early February, and both
said they support the recommenda-
tions last week by the international
commission headed by former U.S.
Sen. George Mitchell.
In a forum organized by Americans
for Peace Now Erekat described the
report as "very harsh and very difficult
to swallow" for the Palestinians, "but it
did not depart conceptually from
agreements already signed.
He did not publicly address the
report's core criticism of the
Palestinians -- that they have initiated
and refused to reign in violence- and
no one in the audience pressed him on
it.
Beilin, however, was outspoken in

Claiming Legitimacy

The Palestinians in the territories marked the "catas-
trophe" on May 15 with violent demonstrations in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, demanding "an
end to occupation" and the dismantling of Israeli
settlements.
Their brethren within Israel commemorated the
day in a much quieter fashion. They staged rallies,
visited some of the 400 Palestinian villages that were
destroyed during the War of Independence and
observed moments of silence.
But their message was loud and clear — not only
did they want to "reopen the 1948 files" and negoti-
ate the return of their relatives from their exile over-
seas, they also insisted on full equality with Jewish
citizens in Israel.
Lutfi Mash'ur, editor of a popular Arabic newspa-
per published in Nazareth, believes there is no con-
tradiction between Tuesday's actions and the desires
of Israeli Arabs to become an integral part of Israeli
society.
"Acts of protest like the Nakba revolt are part of

❑

his criticism of Sharon's plans to
expand Israeli settlements in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. He said the
Mitchell report rightly criticized them
as provocative.
He said settlement expansion,
whether as a result of "natural growth"
or political strategy, is an impediment
to peace.
Who are we deceiving?" he asked.
"Don't we understand what we have
done to ourselves with these settle-
ments? After all these years, well still
have to go back to the '67 borders") to
achieve peace."
Some Israelis have criticized I3eilin's
recent freelance diplomacy he has
met frequently with Arafat and other
Palestinian leaders, although he is not
a member of the Sharon government
or even of the Knesset — as tanta-
mount to treachery. ❑

JTA Staff Writer
Michael J. Jordan in New York
contributed to this report

the Israelization' process of the Arabs," said Mash'ur.
He noted that the now-suspended negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians intensified local
Palestinian demands.
"At the time, when an agreement seemed to be in
the making, Israel's Arabs felt that they were still a
part of the problem, but were not treated as part of
the solution."
Indeed, just as former Premier Ehud Barak negoti-
ated with the Palestinians, he hardly found time to
meet with Israel's Arab Knesset members. Moreover,
the local population felt that it was way at the bot-
tom of the previous government's set of priorities.
According to Mash'ur, this is still very much so,
despite the setback in the negotiations with the
Palestinians. Mash'ur, like many others, anticipates
that negotiations will be renewed, sooner or later —
and then, what about the local Palestinian popula-
tion?
"Each of our protests is geared to say we are here.
We don't want to join the territories, but rather to
prove our legitimacy here in Israel." ❑

5/ 18
2001

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