MIDDLE EAST: A gang of Palestinian teenagers attacked a young Israeli couple strolling on a popular scenic walkway in southern Jerusalem yesterday afternoon, leaving the woman critically injured with multiple stab wounds.
Police chased the gang into the ironically titled Forest of Peace, and one of the youths was killed; police said he collapsed when apprehended. Several of the other youths were later arrested, and police said they were teens as young as 14 from the adjacent neighbourhood of Abu Tor. Last month, an Israeli jogger was attacked in the same spot by a gang of Palestinian youths and badly wounded.
Also yesterday, Israeli troops entered Palestinian-controlled areas in three parts of the West Bank: sending in tanks, making several arrests and injuring three Palestinians during clashes in the village of Tamoun, which is close to the settlement of Hamra, where a Hamas gunman shot dead a mother, her handicapped daughter and a soldier on Wednesday; evicting three families and taking over a building in a neighbourhood that overlooks Nablus, home town of the Hamas gunman, where Israeli planes had also fired missiles overnight at a Palestinian Authority installation; and arresting a leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, Jamal Shehadeh, in Hebron.
Saeb Erekat, the one-time chief Palestinian peace negotiator, condemned what he called "the continuing Israeli aggression to destroy the peace process and to destroy the Palestinian Authority." Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister - acting prime minister while Ariel Sharon visits the United States - said Tamoun had been targeted because "a concentration of people there are planning attacks in Israel." He also noted that the Palestinian Authority had not condemned the killings in Hamra.
In an interview with Israel's Ma'ariv daily, the head of the Authority, Yasser Arafat, urged Mr Sharon to "sit together" with him at the peace table. During his talks with President Bush in Washington, however, Mr. Sharon has been adamant that he will have nothing to do with Mr Arafat, whom he has kept under virtual house arrest in Ramallah for the past two months.
Publicly, President Bush indicated that he would not accept Mr Sharon's call that he too boycott Mr Arafat, although he restated that the Palestinian leader "must do everything in his power to fight terror." He also declined to place Force 17 and the Tanzim, organisations linked to Mr Arafat, on the US list of terrorist groups. Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's National Security Adviser, warned that the policy of trying to isolate Mr Arafat might be counter-productive, strengthening him.
Privately, according to Israel's Defence Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, some in the administration are every bit as critical of Mr Arafat as the Israelis are. Vice- President Richard Cheney, for example, is "more extreme than I am," Mr Ben-Eliezer, who is also in Washington, told Israeli reporters after meeting the Vice- President. According to one report, in the Hebrew daily Ma'ariv, Mr Ben-Eliezer added: "The Vice-President told me, 'As far as I am concerned, you can also hang him (Arafat).' " Mr Ben-Eliezer later denied that quote.