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Sharon Accuses Arafat of Failing to Hold Ceasefire
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Thursday phoned U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, accusing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of failing to hold his promise to carry out a ceasefire.
Shortly after the telephone call, one Israeli woman was killed and her husband wounded in a drive-by shooting incident south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
The Israeli army suspected that the two Jewish settlers, the first Israeli casualties since Arafat announced a unilateral ceasefire on Monday, were shot by Palestinian gunmen.
Sharon, though having not received news about the killing, complained to Powell in the telephone talks that a series of Palestinian attacks took place in the West Bank and Gaza Strip overnight.
Two Israeli were moderately injured when an explosive device exploded near their jeep along the Green Line road between Israel and the West Bank.
An explosive device was detonated overnight near an Israeli army jeep near the West Bank city of Nablus and three mortars were fired at an Israeli army base in the Gaza Strip. There were no injuries in either incident.
Meanwhile, Palestinian sources said that at least one Palestinian was killed and five were injured in exchanges of fire with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday evening.
Those incidents ran against the general trend of a marked drop in attacks since the beginning of the week.
Arafat announced a ceasefire on Monday and repeated on Tuesday that his security forces would not shoot even in self defense.
In response, the Israeli army decided to stop initiated military actions, withdraw from Palestinian areas reoccupied by the army last week near the West Bank cities of Jenin and Jericho, and begin efforts to resume the security coordination between the two sides.
The ceasefire brought a glimmer of hope for finally ending the violence, which has lasted for nearly a year and left over 800 people dead, most of them Palestinians.
It was also hoped that if such a ceasefire could hold for 48 consecutive hours, Sharon, as he had promised, would allow his Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to meet with Arafat to discuss next steps to break the cycle of violence.
But the latest shooting incident may ruin the chances for a Peres-Arafat summit, tentatively scheduled to take place this weekend.
Sharon and Peres already held a meeting Wednesday night to iron out their differences regarding the ceasefire. "Arafat is making a serious effort to reduce the terror," Peres told Israel Radio Thursday morning, before the fatal shooting attack.
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