Leaders’ Cordiality Doesn’t Halt Gaza Clashes

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, March 9 — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has told Yasir Arafat that he hopes they can establish “personal contact” after violence diminishes in the region. But prospects for a meeting any time soon appeared distant today as street clashes and gun battles flared anew throughout Gaza and the West Bank.

The fighting was heaviest on the outskirts of Ramallah, where stone-throwing rioters protested the Israeli Army’s digging of a deep trench intended to cut contact between the city and neighboring Bir Zeit.

Armed clashes in Gaza claimed at least one life, and Israeli police near Hebron took into custody several Jewish settlers suspected in the shooting of a local Palestinian man. Prime Minister Sharon expressed his hope for renewed dialogue with the Palestinians in a letter sent to Mr. Arafat on Thursday, his office reported today.

The letter was a reply to a note of congratulations sent by the Palestinian leader after Mr. Sharon was sworn in Wednesday night. “I hope that we will find a way to conduct personal contacts in the near future,” Mr.

Sharon wrote, “in order to put an end to the cycle of bloodshed, hatred and incitement, and to renew security and economic cooperation on the way towards achieving true peace.” But in an implicit reply to Palestinian demands that negotiations resume from the point where they were suspended in Camp David, Md., and Taba, Egypt, Mr.

Sharon said peace could be achieved only through “direct talks and negotiations on the basis of written and signed agreements and obligations.” Mr. Sharon has said his government will not be bound by any negotiating proposals put on the table by the previous administration of Ehud Barak. Mr.

Sharon and his close aides have said that direct dialogue with the Palestinian leadership will not resume until rioting and armed clashes subside for a sustained period. But Shimon Peres, Mr. Sharon’s foreign minister, has expressed his desire to meet with Mr. Arafat as soon as possible, with few preconditions. The climate for diplomacy did not seem propitious today.

Dozens of Palestinians were wounded in the confrontation outside Ramallah, several seriously, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. And the new army-dug trench severed the one direct road between Ramallah and Bir Zeit, home to the area’s leading university. The university may be forced to suspend classes in coming weeks, Palestinian officials said.

An Israeli army cordon in the area prevented most Palestinians from traveling in or out of Bir Zeit and surrounding towns today, Palestinians said.

Bishop Michel Sabbah, the Latin patriarch and ranking Roman Catholic prelate in the region, was turned back at an Israeli checkpoint as he tried to enter the village of Ein Arik to say Mass there tonight, officials at the patriarchate said in a statement.

Farther north in the West Bank, thousands of supporters of the militant Hamas faction rallied to support the group’s promised campaign of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians in Israeli territory. The Hamas marchers converged on a refugee camp outside Tulkaram that was the home of Ahmed Aliyan, who set off a bomb that killed him and three Israelis on Sunday in Netanya.

In Gaza, the Israeli Army shot and killed a 16-year-old youth in clashes near the Karni border crossing, the army radio reported. The Israeli Army had a scare as Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel’s newly appointed defense minister, was touring army headquarters in Gaza today.

His bodyguards pulled him to the ground as a Palestinian gunman opened fire nearby in what was initially reported to be an assassination attempt. The defense minister took office under Mr. Sharon on Wednesday.

“After looking into the matter, it appears the shot that was heard during the defense minister’s visit to the Gaza brigade headquarters was aimed at a nearby base and had no connection with his visit in the area,” the Israeli army said in a statement later. “Hostile terrorist activity, including gunfire, is common in this sector.”

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [masthead not on clipping] — No masthead, folio line or printed date anywhere on the cut; the clipping begins with the photograph. The dateline reads “JERUSALEM, March 9” and the caption says “yesterday,” so a 10 March 2001 printing is consistent with Maria’s label, but the date is not on the page. The byline, William A. Orme Jr., was a New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem in this period, which supports the paper, but I did not see a masthead. A small numeral “41” sits below the first column; it looks like a slide or folder number added outside the printing, not a page folio, and I would not record it as the page. — Complete story as clipped, three columns. The scan prints many sentence-ending periods so faintly that they are invisible at magnification (for example after “in the region,” “Bir Zeit,” “a local Palestinian man,” “Wednesday night,” “sustained period,” “few preconditions,” “Red Crescent Society,” “Palestinian officials said,” “in a statement,” “Netanya,” “army radio reported,” “statement later”). I have supplied those terminal periods where the sentence structure makes them certain; no words have been supplied. “Mr” without a period also appears several times where the period has dropped out of the impression, and I have set it as “Mr.” throughout.

Cite this clipping

"Leaders’ Cordiality Doesn’t Halt Gaza Clashes," (newspaper unidentified), 10 March 2001. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2001-059. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2001-059