Violence, Skepticism Dull Mideast Peace Hopes

June 5, 2003
By Matt Spetalnick

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The afterglow of a U.S.-led Middle East summit faded Thursday with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat saying Israel had offered nothing "tangible" and hard-liners on both sides vowing to oppose a road map to peace.

Just a day after the summit, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinians in the West Bank, a sign the 32 months of violence Washington had hoped to end was unlikely to abate.

In a village near the West Bank city of Tulkarm, soldiers entered a home to arrest three armed Palestinians ignoring calls to surrender, opened fire, and killed two, the military sources said. Residents confirmed two Palestinians were shot dead.

Israeli security sources said the Palestinians were members of the Islamic militant Hamas group planning a suicide attack against Israel.

Arafat, who was excluded from Wednesday's landmark talks in Jordan but apparently played a behind-the-scenes role, dismissed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's summit pledge to uproot some settler outposts in the West Bank as meaningless.

"Unfortunately, he has not yet offered anything tangible," the Palestinian leader told reporters at his battered West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.

"What's the significance of removing a caravan from one location and then saying 'I have removed a settlement'?"

Brought together by President Bush, Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas committed themselves to following a peace "road map."

Bush, cementing his new role as chief mediator in the conflict, won an Israeli promise to start dismantling some recently built settler enclaves and a Palestinian call to end the armed struggle for an independent state.

But Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions behind attacks on Israelis rejected Abbas's call to lay down their arms and Israelis questioned Abbas's ability to make good on his promise.

PRAISE AND SKEPTICISM

World leaders lauded the summiteers, though many Arabs voiced skepticism. "I don't think anyone in any quarter is getting carried away with the idea of instant optimism," a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

Chanting "We are all martyrs-in-waiting," fighters belonging to an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah faction trained with assault rifles and mortar launchers in the southern Gaza Strip.

"The road map leads to hell," a masked spokesman said, threatening a "painful response" against Israel in coming days.

The Palestinians questioned Sharon's commitment to a two-state solution and to dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians want the territories for their own state.

An Israeli security source said that next week Sharon would begin dismantling some of the 50 hilltop outposts built by Jewish settlers without government permission since he came to power in March 2001.

Israeli officials have said as few as 10 may be dismantled.

Underlining the difficulties Sharon may face, 40,000 settlers demonstrated in Jerusalem Wednesday night against the road map, which charts the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi and Nidal al-Mugrabi)

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