With attention focused on a cycle of violence jeopardizing
the U.S.-backed peace "road map," Jewish settlers have quietly
set up five new outposts in the occupied West Bank since Israel
last week began dismantling such sites, a monitoring group
said.
The United States has appealed for restraint from both
sides after a week of bloodshed in which more than 50 people
were killed. Israeli Major-General Amos Gilad and Palestinian
security chief Mohammed Dahlan held talks late Saturday.
But there was no sign of a breakthrough after the meeting,
which raised the possibility of an Israeli pullback in the
northern Gaza Strip (news - web sites) in exchange for a pledge by the Palestinian
Authority (news - web sites) to crack down on militants in the area.
"Israel will continue to act against targets defined as
'ticking bombs'," the political source quoted Sharon as saying
at his weekly cabinet meeting. "If Palestinians do not act
against the terror infrastructure, Israel will do so."
Last week's violence included the killing of four soldiers
in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian suicide bombing on a Jerusalem
bus and seven Israeli helicopter strikes on militants,
including an attempt to assassinate a Hamas leader, in which
civilians also died.
President Bush (news - web sites) has sent the veteran diplomat John Wolf to
the region to prevent the failure of the peace plan affirmed at
a June 4 summit in Aqaba, Jordan, with Sharon and Palestinian
Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
"Specifically, he will be coordinating, monitoring and
promoting implementation of the road map...including the
commitments made by Israeli and Palestinian leaders at the
Aqaba summit," the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv said in a
statement.
As part of the reciprocal steps charted by the road map,
Israel last week began fulfilling a pledge that Sharon made at
the summit to dismantle settler outposts set up in the West
Bank without government authorization in the past two years.
Ten outposts were scrapped but the Peace Now group, which
monitors settlement activity on land Israel occupied in the
1967 Middle East war, said five new ones -- only one of them
inhabited -- had since gone up.
TROOPS KILL MILITANT IN GAZA
In fresh violence Sunday in the northern Gaza Strip,
Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian militant affiliated
with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) faction.
Israel has criticized Abbas and Dahlan for preferring to
negotiate a deal with militants on ceasing attacks on Israelis
rather than carry out a crackdown mandated by the peace plan.
Palestinian officials say Israel's targeting of militants
undermines Abbas's authority and all attempts to halt violence.
The road map calls for reciprocal steps to stop the
bloodshed and envisages a Palestinian state by 2005.
Hamas, the main group behind a campaign of suicide bombings
against Israelis, said it would reject any deal between Israel
and the Palestinian Authority.
Egyptian officials, seeking to end the wave of violence,
traveled to Gaza Sunday to try to coax Hamas into resuming
talks with Abbas, security sources said.
In the Gaza Strip, an eight-year-old girl died of wounds
suffered in an Israeli helicopter strike last week, Palestinian
medical officials said.
