World

Mideast Violence Spikes

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 4, 2001 / 8:46 AM EDT / CBS

Palestinians shot and killed two Jewish settlers Monday and the Israeli army reported a string of shooting incidents in the West Bank as a fragile five-day truce came under massive strain.

Israeli hard-liners denounced Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government for failing to take stronger action against the Palestinians in the face of the growing violence.

"Enough restraint!" shouted a furious crowd of about 100 settlers outside Sharon's office in Jerusalem alongside the body of 35-year-old Danny Yehuda, shot dead by Palestinian gunmen near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Earlier in the day, Sharon had rejected right-wingers' demands to go to war. "To take the people now to war, in my view, is a mistake of the first order from every perspective."

Just a few hours later, Sharon's office quoted him as saying " … the violations of the cease-fire and the murderous attacks create an intolerable situation which will not allow Israel to maintain its current position over time."

Sharon Target Of War Crimes Complaint

Survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon lodged a complaint with a Belgian judge Monday demanding the indictment of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on war crimes charges.

Sharon was Israeli defense minister in 1982 when hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps south of Beirut were slaughtered by a Lebanese Christian militia allied with Israel.

The survivors want him prosecuted under a law giving Belgian courts the authority to try war crimes no matter where they occurred.

During the attack, Israeli troops encircled Muslim West Beirut and allowed the Christian militias to enter the camps. But Israeli officials say they never expected them to kill the refugees.

Israeli inquiries into the massacre found Sharon indirectly responsible and he had to resign as defense minister.

Israeli officials condemned a British Broadcasting Corp. TV program broadcast Sunday which highlighted the debate over Sharon's alleged role in the killings.

"This whole BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) production is an unprecedented scandal," Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Channel Two television.

(AP/Reuters)

Divisions have also appeared in Sharon's own cabinet: CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger reports Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was furious Sunday when Sharon vetoed Pres' efforts to talk with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Last Wednesday, Sharon joined Arafat in accepting a truce plan brokered by CIA Director George Tenet, aimed at ending more than eight months of bloodshed and laying the ground for a return to peacemaking.

Nearly 600 people have died since last September when the Palestinians began their revolt against Israeli occupation after overall peace talks stalled.

Police said Yehuda, 35, was on his way home to the settlement of Chomesh when a Palestinian taxi passed in the opposite direction, did a U-turn, pursued the car and opened fire.

Arafat's Fatah faction claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Hours after Yehuda was killed, Doron Zisserman was killed as he drove in a convoy of cars approaching the Einav settlement in the northern West Bank. He was the third Israeli killed since the truce began.

Israeli soldiers killed a nine-year-old Palestinian boy on Sunday during stone-throwing in Gaza. He was the fourth Palestinian killed in the last five days.

There was uncertainty over the fate of Adel al-Mukannen, 16, shot and gravely wounded Sunday in the same area.

Police arrested six settlers suspected of planning arson attacks in retaliation for Palestinian attacks.

In other violence Monday, two bombs were discovered and safely detonated in the coastal city of Haifa, police said. One bomb was attached to a motorcycle and was set to be detonated by an attached cellular telephone, police spokesman Yehuda Maaman said.

Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs held U.S.-hosted talks Monday night on cementing the truce and restoring cooperation in the field.

The two sides charged each other with cease-fire violations. Palestinian security commander Jibril Rajoub said no new ground was broken, but another meeting was set for Wednesday.

Both sides have accepted the recommendations of the international commission headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, which require Israel to freeze Jewish settlement construction once a cease-fire is in place.

Learn more about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The truce gives the two sides a week to carry out their basic commitments before the cooling-off period goes into effect.

But Sharon said Monday, "As long as there is no total cease fire, the counting of the cooling-off period will not begin."

"We have two Israelis dead, that's a lot for any day," said an army spokesman who asked not to be named. "The violence this evening is coming back to a level as if there is no cease-fire.

Arafat also expressed doubts about the staying power of the cease-fire. Earlier Tuesday he said in Amman that Sharon's government was "obsessed by the mania of force and war."

"I stress that the cease-fire and any measures, agreements and security meetings can't possbly last if the Israeli side doesn't … take swift measures on the ground," he said.

Arafat called on Israel to freeze the building of Jewish settlements, halt its "aggression" against Palestinians, lift its military and economic blockade of the West Bank and Gaza and resume peace talks.

In Gaza Monday, Israeli soldiers withdrew from two Palestinian buildings they seized at the sensitive Netzarim junction eight months ago, Palestinian security officials said.

Israeli bulldozers removed cement roadblocks at the West Bank towns of Halhoul and Qalqila Monday. But dozens of checkpoints and cement roadblocks were still in place at other entrances to the two towns.

At least seven Palestinian cities and towns, and hundreds of villages, were still cut off and the army said it restored a cordon on the town of Tulkarm, close to the site of the attack that killed Zisserman.