Two former Israeli prime ministers said yesterday that the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, is not a peace partner for Israel, Michael Jansen reports.
Mr Ehud Barak of Labour said: "In Arafat we do not have a partner for making decisions. Arafat is 73 years old. He has not changed. Any statement to the contrary is self-delusion."
Mr Barak's right-wing Likud predecessor went further. "If Israel wants to attain peace, it will have to cause the collapse of Yasser Arafat's regime," Mr Binyamin Netanyahu asserted. "If you violate [agreements] there is a price. And the only price these despots understand is the survival of their regimes."
Mr Netanyahu said Israel should gradually eliminate its rule over Palestinians, while ensuring the security foundations vital to the state. "If there will not be a partner to an agreement like this, we will be forced to take unilateral steps [leading to] separation," he said.
In the West Bank Israeli troops and tanks entered the village of Tubas and set up a new military position in the east of the village which is under full Palestinian control. The Israelis also established roadblocks.
In separate incidents in the West Bank an Israeli was lightly wounded yesterday when his car was fired on near Nablus and a 10-year-old Palestinian boy was seriously injured in Jenin. At Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip thousands of Palestinian mourners took part in the funeral procession of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy killed by Israeli fire on Monday.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which assassinated the Israeli minister, Mr Revaham Ze'evi, in October and the Democratic Front joined Hamas and Islamic Jihad in rejecting Mr Arafat's call for a truce.