Palestine rejects Israeli demands and conditions
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 1/13/1998

Palestinian officials rejected the Israeli government's list of conditions for the implementation of the second phase of Israeli army withdrawal from the West Bank. Palestinian sources said Tuesday that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat will present in his upcoming summit meeting with US President Bill Clinton next week an updated list of Israeli violations of the interim agreements between the PLO and Israel. Arafat, the sources said, will stress the urgency of an effective role to be played by the US in order to move the peace process forward. "There is a feeling among us that the forthcoming Arafat-Clinton summit might be the last chance to get things moving otherwise, the whole region might witness a major blast," the sources said.

In its Tuesday session, the Israeli government adopted a list of alleged violations by the Palestinians of the interim agreements and gave a set of demands saying that their fulfillment by the Palestinians is the condition for implementing the second phase of redeployment. Among those conditions is a call for the Palestinians to complete the amendment of the Palestinian National Charter, to extradite Palestinians suspected by Israel of attacking Israelis, and to intensify security cooperation between the two sides.

Dr. Ahmad Tibi, special advisor to Palestinian President Arafat on Israeli affairs, said after the Israeli cabinet meeting that Palestine "fully rejects the Israeli demands and believes the Israeli government is doing everything it can to escape implementing the interim agreements." Tibi said the Palestinian charter subject should not be raised at all because "it had already been amended and all clauses that contradict the mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel were omitted.

Tibi said Palestine has invested 100 percent effort to maintaining security coordination with the Israeli government. Yet, he noted, it was the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who vetoed the security agreement that was lately reached between Palestinian and Israeli security officers with the presence of US security officers as observers.

Palestinian sources said the revelation of a Hamas cell in Nablus by the Palestinian police was part of the Palestinian security efforts and it will serve Palestinian President Arafat in his forthcoming meeting with President Clinton. The sources said President Arafat will provide the evidence that Palestine is doing its maximum to maintain the momentum of the interim agreements with Israel and that it is Israel that has failed to implement those agreements. The sources rejected Israel's demand for extradition of Palestinians to Israel and said that "if Netanyahu speaks of reciprocity, then he should ask himself if his government would be ready to hand over to the Palestinian National Authority Jewish terrorists suspected of carrying out attacks on Palestinian civilians."

Meanwhile, Israel announced that its forces had uncovered a Hamas cell which had been allegedly preparing to carry out attacks on cities in Israel, and on Jewish settlements. Dozens of Hamas members were arrested and some of them confessed that they took part in shooting incidents and the laying of explosives against Israeli civilians and military vehicles in the Nablus area, the sources said. In one such attack, two border policemen were injured.

Israeli sources said some of those had confessed to possession of weapons and explosives and led their interrogators to a weapons laboratory for Hamas in Nablus. The information was passed on to the Palestinian and the laboratory was discovered in a raid by Palestinian security forces.

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