EREZ CROSSING - Israel's President Ezer Weizman and the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, yesterday pledged to restore security contacts but their meeting failed to jolt the ailing peace process out of seven weeks of crisis.
The meeting, only the second high level Israeli-Palestinian contact in nearly two months, came as Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan decided to boycott a joint ceremony on the Jordan border where a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls last March. The Jordanians are furious that Israel has not kept its side of a treaty to supply the Hashemite kingdom with an agreed amount of water from the Jordan river.
Mr Weizman, whose post is largely ceremonial, said after meeting Mr Arafat at the Israel-Gaza border that the Palestinian president had agreed "to bring about a resumption of talks between security chiefs of the Palestinian Authority and our security chiefs".
Meanwhile, 18 Jewish settlers were arrested yesterday and several others injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers after the army bulldozed three illegally built homes at Yizhar on the West Bank.