MIDDLE EAST: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat yesterday rejected an Israeli demand that he present a list of all the men holed up inside his battered Ramallah compound, as Israeli and Palestinian officials held their first talks aimed at ending the four-day siege.
Toward evening, an Israeli man was killed and his three children injured in Hebron, when a Palestinian gunman opened fire on a crowd of Jewish worshippers visiting the divided West Bank city for the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles. The gunman strafed a group of people from the direction of the casbah (market), before escaping through its narrow alleyways.
After having met Israeli officials near Ramallah, the Israeli army allowed chief Palestinian negotiator Mr Saeb Erekat through the tight cordon around what little remains of Mr Arafat's compound, to brief the Palestinian leader.
But Mr Erekat made it clear the Palestinians had no intention of providing Israel with a list of the 200 men holed up inside. "We told them (the Israelis) that this is none of their business, and we called for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal from President Arafat's office, and an end to the siege," he said.
Israel says the siege, which began last Thursday after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a Tel Aviv bus, killing six people and himself, will continue until a group of men inside the compound and who it says have been involved in attacks on Israelis, are handed over. "As long as they are not put on trial before their Maker or before a judge, we will not end the siege," said Mr Raanan Gissin, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon.
Palestinian officials vowed yesterday that the scenario which played out at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - one they view as humiliating - will not repeat itself in Ramallah. The 38-day showdown at the church, which was surrounded by Israeli troops who demanded that militants who had taken refuge inside surrender, ended when the Palestinians agreed to the deportation to Europe of 13 of the men.
At the Ramallah compound, Mr Arafat and his aides remained confined to several rooms in his office building, which was ringed by barbed wire.
There was no sign of the bulldozers, though, which had wrecked much of the compound over the weekend and which Israel withdrew on Sunday night, largely as a result of American pressure.