JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The familiar sounds of battle echoed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who vetoed a planned PerezArafat meeting Sunday, Sep 15, 2001, made truce talks with the Palestinians conditional on 48 hours of peace. (Read photo caption below)Arafat said Palestinians were already committed to a cease-fire and ready for a political dialogue at any time.
While the world continued to focus on events in the United States, the Israeli occupation army announced it would make a 18-mile-long area of the West Bank adjacent to the Israeli border off-limits to Palestinians, save for local villagers.
The occupation army called the move a security measure to block Resistance bombers from reaching Israeli cities. A Palestinian cabinet minister said the buffer zone in Israeli-occupied territory was a prelude to ``an all-out assault'' on Palestinian-ruled areas.
Sharon, blocking his dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, from holding truce talks on Sunday with Arafat, said the meeting could go ahead only if, what he called, violence stopped first.
By late evening, Israeli occupation army statements reporting gun battles across the West Bank and Gaza Strip were flashing across correspondents' pagers almost every 10 minutes.
Palestinian security officials said four Palestinians were wounded by tank shells fired near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
While continuing to surround Jenin, the occupation army sent tanks and helicopters into Ramallah.
A Palestinian intelligence officer and an Israeli soldier were killed in the Ramallah fighting.
SHARON EYES U.S. ANTI-TERROR ALLIANCE
Sharon said he was making the cease-fire appeal to Arafat ''in the light of the U.S. commitment to uproot all the terrorist organizations' network and in order to prevent continued bloodshed in our region.''
Middle East analysts say it will be difficult for President Bush to forge an alliance with Arab and Islamic states if Israeli-Palestinian confrontations continue.
Sharon told parliament that talks now with Arafat, without an end to, what he calls, violence, would give the Palestinian leader ''legitimacy as a good guy.''
That could pave the way for Arafat to join the U.S. alliance, giving him ``a chance to continue with the terror without us being able to act against him,'' Sharon said.
He added that the U.S. drive must include a fight against ''all terror organizations including those of Arafat.''
PHOTO CAPTION:
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (R) and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres observe a moment of silence for the victims of terror attacks in the United States at a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem September 16, 2001. Sharon, who vetoed a PerezArafat meeting scheduled for Sunday, Sep 15, 2001, pledged to call off military raids and launch truce talks if Palestinian President Yasser Arafat declares a cease-fire to end almost a year of fighting. (Natalie Behring/Reuters)