World

Barak: It's Me Or War

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 26, 2000 / 10:01 AM EST / CBS

Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned Israelis on Saturday they would face war if his hawkish rival Ariel Sharon won looming elections, while Palestinian groups urged an intensified uprising against Israeli occupation.

A combative Barak said he would triumph over Sharon despite polls that suggest the conservative Likud party leader would trounce him in a special Feb. 6 prime ministerial ballot.

"I will win this election," he told Russian state television in a pre-recorded interview. "The real choice is Barak and war. I don't want to put Sharon off peace, but (it's) Barak or war."

Sharon has said that if elected he would seek a long-term peace deal with the Palestinians to be implemented over several years, rather than try to resolve the conflict's most sensitive issues now such as Jerusalem's status, as Barak has tried to do.

Sporadic violence, meanwhile, rumbled on in the West Bank and Gaza, casting another layer of gloom over efforts to revive peace talks and end three months of bloodshed in which at least 346 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed.

Voice of Palestine radio reported that two people had been wounded in sporadic clashes in the West Bank on Saturday. Israel's army reported a single incident near the West Bank town of Hebron in which Palestinians burned tires.

In the north, witnesses said Israeli soldiers had shot dead a Lebanese man at the border between the two countries, a favored spot for Lebanese to throw rocks at the Israeli army in a show of support for the Palestinian uprising.

They said the man had been shot as he walked along a road near the Fatma Gate. An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers had shot the man as he tried to breach the border.

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza for the funeral of policeman Mahmoud Naseer, killed on Friday in a battle involving Israeli tank fire near the Israel-Gaza border.

"Let us teach them how to kill the Jews," they chanted.

Palestinian officials say there've even been private Israeli-Palestinian peace talks between Israeli minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Korei in New York, but like earlier talks in Washington, they have faltered.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction called for an escalation in a three-month-old Intifada (uprising) to mark the 36th anniversary of the group's foundation and usher in 2001 as the year of Palestinian independence.

Fatah is the largest and most influential Palestinian faction that rules the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also forms the backbone of the Palestinian Authority.

"Continuing the Intifada is the only choice capable of achieving independence and sweeping occupation," it said.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace drive stumbled again on Friday when the two sides staked out opposing positions over the right of return for Palestinian refugees and control over Jerusalem.

Barak said he would nosign a deal agreeing to the right of Palestinian refugee return or Palestinian sovereignty over the Jerusalem holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Arabs as al-Haram al-Sharif.

The Palestinian cabinet said after a weekly meeting that it would not agree to a settlement that failed to meet fully its core demands, but that it was still committed to "full and serious negotiations under international sponsorship."

Western diplomats warned of a stand-off between the Palestinians and the United States over the details of the U.S. proposals.

Around the Mideast, observers, too, are skeptical that peace will be soon achieved. In Jordan, the monarchy may favor President Clinton's peace initiativest, but many of the kingdom's predominantly Palestinian subjects say his latest proposal caters only to Israel.

"Any U.S.-brokered deal will cost the Palestinians dearly because the U.S. only cares about Israel," said Eid Abu-Taha, a 37-year-old technician puffing on a traditional water pipe at a coffee shop in downtown Amman. "Arab interests are nonexistent in the American dictionary."

Clinton reportedly suggested giving the Palestinians a state in 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza as well as sovereignty over a disputed holy site in Jerusalem. In exchange, the Palestinians would curtail their demand for a right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel.

The mass circulation al-Ra'i newspaper expressed skepticism over the proposals Saturday, saying: "The indications and the facts confirm that the American proposals unannounced, mysterious and secretive as they are had reached a dead end."

A senior Palestinian negotiator says he needs more details on the U.S.peace plan before he can respond to President Clinton's invitation to formal peace talks.

Saeb Erekat said the proposal isn't clear on "Jerusalem, the border, security and settlements and refugees."

Arafat arrived in Tunis on Saturday night for talks with Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on U.S. proposals. Officials said Arafat would meet Ben Ali on Sunday to discuss ideas put forward by Clinton at the close of five days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials in Washington.

Arafat, who made no comment to waiting reporters in Tunis, has said an Arab summit follow-up committee will meet on Monday to discuss the U.S. blueprint.

Arafat has had frequent consultations with Ben Ali on the Middle East peace process. Tunisia severed its low-level diplomatic ties with Israel in October to protest Israeli violence against Palestinians.

Marking a new channel in talks, a senior Palestinian official said Palestinian delegates were due to hold talks in coming days with U.S. officials in Washington on Clinton's plan.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he would visit Amman on Sunday for talks with Jordanian officials.

Fatah's call for militancy was echoed in Damscus, where the radical Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine urged Arafat to give arms to all Palestinians to fight Israel.

Hundreds of students from the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups on Saturday burned pictures of Israeli leaders in a rally in Nablus in the West Bank held to commemorate a suicide bomber who wounded three Israelis in an attack on Dec. 22.

Witnesses said the Israeli army sealed off the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza on Saturday as it tightened its closure on Palestinian areas, imposed in the wake of the two bomb attacks on Thursday in which two Israelis were killed.