Egypt rules out peace-saving summit in Sharm El-Sheikh
Egypt-Regional, Politics, 5/9/2001

Egypt yesterday ruled out convening a save-the-peace summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

"There are no preparations for a summit in Sharm El-Sheikh especially as the Middle East peace process is facing hard times," Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said.

"The Israeli rejection of the Egyptian-Jordanian peace initiative is casting dark shadows on the future of the entire peace process," added Moussa, on a current visit to Morocco to attend a four-way Arab economic gathering.

Commenting on a report by the US-led fact-finding mission on the Middle East violence, Moussa said that Egypt was still studying the report.

"The report has some positive aspects which can be built on, especially the items related to settlements and the call for halting their construction," Moussa said.

Moussa said that the Israeli military escalation "closes all doors for achieving any progress."

In a further provocation to the international community, Israeli hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday rejected the US-led committee's call to freeze of Jewish settlements construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We don't have to pay in order not to be killed. We will not pay protection money," he told the Foreign Press Association.

The 73-year-old former general, responsible for massacring hundreds of Arabs in Lebanon and Palestine, also said Israel had no intention of killing Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

A preliminary report by former US Senator George Mitchell's five-man committee, set up to investigate the bloodshed, said it would be hard to achieve any real halt in violence unless the Israeli government "freezes all settlement construction activity".

But Sharon told reporters Israel would not "reward" Palestinians for ending their uprising.

In a flagrant disregard of the international community, he said Israel had no intention of building new settlements, but would let existing ones expand in line with the natural growth of their population .

Sharon rejected the view that the West Bank and Gaza were "occupied territories", calling them "disputed" lands which Jordan and Egypt "occupied" in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

In a related development, Palestinian fighters killed a Jewish settler in the West Bank yesterday, a day after a four-month-old Palestinian baby had been killed by Israeli gunfire to become the youngest victim of more than seven months of Israeli brutality.

Hours after the settler was shot and stabbed to death, Palestinian police said Israeli army bulldozers had pushed 150 metres into a Palestinian area near the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip and destroyed a well.

Hundreds of Palestinian mourners carrying posters of the four-month-old Iman Hejjo, killed by shrapnel on Monday during an Israeli attack on Khan Younis refugee camp, gathered for her funeral in the Deir al-Balah camp in Gaza.

Her father Mohammed, a policeman who was himself wounded in clashes five months ago, collapsed on the ground in tears as her body was brought into the mourning house.

"The killing of my baby will remain as a stigma on the face of Israel and the international community," he said.

The United States has criticised Israel's recent incursions into Palestinian-run areas, and the new bloodshed prompted the head of a commission that investigated the violence to urge Washington to keep up the search for Middle East peace.

"I don't think there can be peace in the Middle East without an active role by the United States, and I think the administration is acting on that premise as well," former US senator George Mitchell told American television late on Monday Fifteen Palestinians were hurt when troops opened fire on civilian protesters near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.

Medical officials said four Palestinians had been hurt when Israeli occupation troops opened fire with rubber-coated metal bullets on protesters near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Previous Stories:
  Egypt urges UN to shed more light on Palestinian issue   (5/5/2001)
  Egypt participates in preparations for International Development Conference   (5/3/2001)
  The Intifada: A revolution and reaction to Israeli violence   (5/2/2001)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search