Palestinian President Yasser Arafat yesterday issued his first public call for a cessation of gunfire from inside areas under his full control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mr Arafat said he was making "every effort to prevent any element from firing" from Palestinian-controlled territory. "There are orders from the Palestinian Security Council to stop shooting," he said.
Mr Arafat's comments, issued after Friday prayers in Gaza, came on yet another day of violence in the West Bank and Gaza in which four Palestinians died in clashes with Israeli troops.
Hospital staff reported that a 14-year-old Palestinian boy died after being shot in Hebron, while another Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli troops in the village of Halhul, south of Hebron. A Palestinian visiting from Jordan was shot dead in clashes with Israeli soldiers near the West Bank city of Kalkilya. The Israeli army denied using live ammunition in the area.
Two Palestinian policemen were shot dead by Israeli troops during a pre-dawn firefight in the Jericho area. The two were killed when an Israeli unit opened fire on Palestinian gunmen shooting at the Jewish settlement of Vered Yericho. Palestinian officials insisted the policemen had not been involved in the gunfire and were in fact trying to prevent the gunmen from shooting.
Over 200 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured since fighting erupted. Twenty-five Israelis have been killed.
There were only minor skirmishes between Palestinians and Israeli police after Friday prayers ended at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, a highly explosive area where the seven-week-old confrontation started after a provocative visit to the site by hardline opposition leader Mr Ariel Sharon in late September. Israel again barred all Palestinians under the age of 45 from attending prayers, in an effort to prevent rioting.
Israel has blamed Mr Arafat for the ongoing clashes and has made any resumption of peace talks conditional on a dramatic reduction in the level of violence.
Yesterday, Israeli officials said they were unimpressed by Mr Arafat's call, pointing out that he had only demanded that shooting cease from areas under full Palestinian control and had made no mention of shooting attacks carried out by Palestinians in those parts of the West Bank and Gaza that are under combined Israeli-Palestinian control or full Israeli control. These areas constitute the vast majority of the occupied territories.
In an attempt to shore up his political support, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, yesterday visited the Jewish neighbourhood of Gilo, which is located in a disputed part of Jerusalem and which has come under almost daily fire from the nearby West Bank village of Beit Jalla.
An opinion poll published in the daily Ma'ariv yesterday showed Mr Barak trailing the former prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, by a huge 18 per cent margin. Mr Barak, who trounced Mr Netanyahu in a 1999 national election, got only 29 per cent support in the survey to Mr Netanyahu's 47 per cent. If early elections are held in Israel - an increasingly likely prospect - the former prime minister is likely to return to head the hardline opposition and to challenge Mr Barak.
Ironically, Mr Barak's political future may well reside in the hands of Mr Arafat. Most political commentators believe that the Prime Minister's only hope of winning an early election is if he can reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, which would boost his political support.