MIDDLE EAST: The Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, said last night that a new ceasefire was in the works and that Israel was "invited" to join.
Interviewed on Israel TV's Channel 10, Mr Arafat said: "Even the Islamic Jihad said they are willing to be obligated to a ceasefire, and we are continuing our contacts with Hamas here and abroad."
The Palestinian Prime Minister-designate, Mr Ahmed Korei, has already said that he will call on Israel "to agree to a mutual ceasefire" once he forms a new government.
But Israeli leaders have dismissed the idea of a new truce, saying that the Palestinian Authority must first show that it is serious about ending violence by cracking down on militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
A unilateral truce declared by armed groups on June 29th lasted just over seven weeks. It collapsed in mid-August when Israel assassinated a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip following a suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem which killed 23 people.
Mr Arafat yesterday shrugged off a US veto of a UN Security Council resolution aimed at barring Israel from taking any action against him. "No decisions here or there will shake us," Mr Arafat told supporters at his Ramallah compound. "We are bigger than all decisions."
The resolution was tabled following a decision, in principle, last week by Israel's security cabinet to "remove" the Palestinian leader.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, yesterday postponed a meeting of the security cabinet which was meant to have approved the next stage of the controversial security fence being built by Israel.
The decision to put off the meeting appeared to be a response to American pressure, coming just a day after the US, which has been critical of the fence, said that it might deduct the cost of those sections of the fence which jut into Palestinian territory from the $9 billion loan guarantee package it has promised Israel.
The Americans have been warning Israel not to allow the fence to deviate dramatically from the 1967 border - Palestinians hope that this 365 km line will ultimately form the border of their future state - and bulge eastwards into the West Bank to include the large settlement of Ariel. With Israel suffering from an extended recession, the loan guarantees are a key part of the government's economic programme.
Aides to Mr Sharon rejected the notion that the prime minister had succumbed to US demands, but the Housing Minister, Mr Effi Eitam, said that the Americans were "applying pressure".
Mr Eitam is head of the right-wing National Religious Party, which is the patron of the Jewish settlers who oppose the barrier because they fear it will ultimately serve as the border of a future independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, which they strenuously oppose.
The Palestinians also fear that the barrier - made up of rolls of barbed wire, trenches and electronic sensors - will ultimately become a border. But they are concerned that it will cut into the West Bank and gobble up large swathes of land on which they hope to set up a state. The barrier has also severed Palestinian farmers from their land and is transforming some towns and villages into fenced-off enclaves.
Many Israeli politicians and members of the defence establishment argue that the fence is a vital security barrier which will keep suicide-bombers out of their cities.
Sandwiched between these conflicting pressures, Mr Sharon has been dragging his feet - as he did again yesterday - preferring to delay a decision on the routing of the next stage of the fence, which will run down to Jerusalem.