From: jle@lear.bos.locus.com (John Elghani)
Subject: Palestinians blame Israel for 'killing' peace process
Organization: LC
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 04:27:07 GMT

Found on soc.culture.lebanon:

	JERUSALEM (UPI) -- Grim-faced Palestinian leaders warned Wednesday
that Israel's deportation of 415 Muslim militants to Lebanon was 
``killing'' the Middle East peace process, but they did not rule out a
return to negotiations in Washington.
	Faisal Husseini, the top adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the
peace talks, said supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization
were weighing a renewed emphasis on ``armed struggle.'' He said the
possible change in tactics would be a response to Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin's unprecedented crackdown on the fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic
Jihad organizations, which was upheld by Israel's Supreme Court Tuesday.
	``There are a lot of options...the political option and the armed
struggle option,'' he said at a press conference in Arab East Jerusalem.
	``The Israelis have given a death blow to the peace process and they
are the only side that can bring it back to life,'' he said. ``It's not
that we're withdrawing from the peace process. It's that the other side
is killing it.''
	Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, at a press conference across town in
West Jerusalem, urged the Palestinians to go back to the negotiating
table and to agree to elections in the occupied territories to oversee
interim self-rule arrangements.
	``I hope that Faisal Husseini will be convinced like all of us that
the best thing for all parties is to negotiate. We had five wars with
the Arabs. The Arabs didn't win any wars. We won all the wars but we did
not win a solution,'' he said.
	``The only solution that was reached was in peace negotiations, not
on the battlefield,'' Peres said. ``I strongly recommend to Faisal
Husseini to prefer reason and to look at history.''
	Peres said he welcomed the announcement that James Jonah, U.N.
undersecretary for political affairs, would arrive in Israel Saturday
night on a two-day ``goodwill mission.'' He said he and Rabin would give
the U.N. envoy a detailed briefing on Israel's reasons for the
deportation and its fears of militant Islamic fundamentalism.
	At a special Cabinet meeting, members of the left-wing Meretz Party
called on Rabin to open direct talks with the Palestine Liberation
Organization as a counterweight to international criticism Israel has
received for the expulsions. Rabin's spokesman said the prime minister
rejected the advice.
	``Israel has no intention of entering into negotiations with the PLO,
'' said spokesman Gad Ben-Ari. ``The prime minister emphasized in the
meeting that whoever expects a change in Israeli policy toward the
format of the (peace talks) is betting his money in the wrong place.
	In the Gaza Strip, residents said 35 Palestinians were injured during
clashes in Gaza City's Palestine Square after groups of young men pelted
soldiers with stones. They said two of the injured were in critical
condition, and that a 6-year-old boy was reported in moderate condition
after being shot in the abdomen.
	Army officials said that 12 Palestinians were injured in the clash
and that they were checking for further details.
	Troops lifted a military closure imposed on the strip since Dec. 8,
allowing 24,000 Palestinians to return to their jobs in Israel. Curfews
were also lifted in some towns and refugee camps, but 300,000 Gaza
residents remained confined to their homes by military order.
	The closure was imposed after three soldiers were killed Dec. 7 in an
ambush north of Gaza City by the military wing of Hamas.
	Hanan Ashrawi, spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation, said at
the East Jerusalem gathering that the expulsion was the most glaring,
but by no means the only recent, Israeli blow to the peace process. 
``You cannot have a charade of negotiations when the substance of peace
is being negated daily,'' she said.
	But she and Husseini carefully avoided wordings that would signal an
irrevocable pullout from the talks, saying the issue was being
considered in Tunis by the PLO leadership.
	Ghassan Khatib, another negotiatior, predicted that a Palestinian
return to the next round of Washington talks in February ``will depend
on efforts being made by the PLO and other states to assure the safe
return of the deportees.''
	Ashrawi said, however, that even the opening of a dialogue by Israel
with PLO leaders in Tunis, a step shunned by the Rabin government, would
not necessarily revive the negotiations.
	``Talking with the PLO has to be within the proper conditions....It
must not be presented or perceived as the PLO accepting Israel's measure
of deportations,'' she said.
	Israel's Supreme Court rejected appeals to the deportation Tuesday
night and expressed skepticism about claims that the men were in mortal
danger because of shelling from Israeli-backed Lebanese militiamen and
the frigid cold.
	The Peace Now movement issued a statement urging the Cabinet to 
``give a public accounting'' of its support for the deportations. 
``Regret within the inner rooms (of government) is not sufficient,''
said the statement.
	Israel issued the deportation order a week ago following the
kidnapping and execution of a border policeman. Five other Israeli
soldiers were also killed by members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad
since Dec. 8. Rabin defended the action as part of a ``war on terror''
and has continued to be defiant against almost total world censure.
	Six days after Israel's unprecedented crackdown, members of the Hamas
and Islamic Jihad organizations were still wandering in southern
Lebanon, chased from a tent camp set up by international relief
organizations. The government of Lebanon has refused to accept the
deportees and its army continued to prod the men toward the security
zone. Relief workers warned of water and food shortages and said many of
the deportees had diarhea and stomach ailments.
	Israel's surrogate South Lebanon Army militia shot at the deportees
Monday under orders from Rabin, injuring three. Rabin later disputed
that the shelling was to blame, saying the action was meant to scare
them and prevent them from trying to return to Israeli-controlled
territory in Lebanon.
	Peres said Israel would continue to use force to keep them from
entering its self-declared ``security zone,'' but with ``the necessary
carefulness to avoid creating victims.''



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