FRANKFURT, (Islamweb & Agencies) -Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has condemned violence by both the Israelis and the Palestinians in an interview in a German newspaper (the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) Thursday.
The lifting of Israel's blockade on Palestinian areas and the resumption of serious negotiations would be the best way to create confidence between the two peoples, the Palestinian leader said in the interview published on the day that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visits Germany. (Read photo caption below).
Regarding concrete measures to respect the crumbling US-sponsored Middle East ceasefire, Arafat said that several arrests had been made, even in the heart of his own Fatah movement.
However due to the Israeli occupation it is not possible for the Palestinian Authority to guarantee security in the same manner as an independent state, Arafat added, saying that such attempts were ruined by Israeli provocation.
Dwindling hopes for a peaceful resolution in the Middle East disappeared in a hail of bullets Wednesday as Israeli forces seriously wounded a Palestinian activist in an assassination attempt in the West Bank.
Later an Israeli civilian was shot dead on the border of the West Bank near the Arab Israeli town of Baqa El Gharbieh, in a case which may only be crime-related, police said.
On Wednesday Arafat accused Israel of violating the ceasefire, in place since June 13, and said the Palestinian side would "respect and observe a policy of restraint... despite the enormity of Israeli acts of violence and terrorism," the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.
Arafat was speaking at Ramallah on the West Bank during a meeting with diplomats accredited to the Palestinian Authority.
He reiterated his call for an international protection force in the region.
Sharon travels to France and then Germany on Thursday to try to shore up European support for the Israeli position amid a new flurry of diplomatic efforts to keep the region from exploding.
Human Rights Watch called Wednesday on France to pressure Sharon to clarify his role into the 1982 massacre of up to 2,000 Palestinians at refugee camps in Lebanon.
In a statement from its Brussels office, the US-based human rights organization, which favors the launch of a criminal investigation into the deaths, said French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine should raise the matter when Sharon visits him in Paris.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Palestinian boys flash victory signs out of a mock prison window during a demonstration in front of the International Red Cross office in the West Bank town of Nablus, July 4, 2001. Israel's so-called security cabinet (de facto: War Cabinet) approved a strategy of attacking Palestinian activists despite U.S. opposition to what the Palestinian Authority has condemned as an assassination campaign. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters)