Israel Foreign Relations Plo

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected a request from President Bush on Friday to restart cease-fire negotiations with the Palestinians, an Israeli Cabinet minister said. Sharon told the president that he had canceled a meeting planned for Sunday between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat because it would damage Israeli interests, said Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Sunday after Israel refused to let a U.N. mission begin investigating the past month's battles at the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, but it agreed to defer any official response until after the Israeli Cabinet held a planned second day of debate on the matter today.

In an unprecedented move toward ending the Middle East's most enduring conflict, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed on mutual recognition Thursday, declaring their intent to begin living not as enemies but as neighbors.

Israel and the Palestinians on Sunday accepted a U.S. proposal aimed at lifting the Israeli army's monthlong siege of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat inside his West Bank headquarters. The deal, based on a proposal by President Bush, would release Arafat from weeks spent trapped on two floors of his shattered offices in Ramallah and defuse one of the most contentious issues dividing the two sides. Palestinian officials said they expected the siege to be lifted as early as today.

As I waited to board a flight from Ben Gurion International Airport to New York, I felt an impatient shove from behind and turned to flash a bothered look at the offender, a rotund man who wore the sidelocks, black hat and frock coat of a devout Jew. "You got a problem, lady?" he asked in a heavy Brooklyn accent. "Yes," I answered. "I don't like to be pushed." "Well, maybe you can deal with that problem when you get home," he said.

A once-unthinkable proposal to turn over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City to United Nations authority is being resurrected in an attempt to breathe new life into peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, officials from several nations said Friday. The proposal, which Israel is said to now favor but Palestinians so far oppose, comes as American officials struggle for ways to salvage negotiations and set the Middle East on the road to a definitive peace.

A Los Angeles pediatrician whose daughter was seriously wounded in suicide bombings in Jerusalem expressed anger, frustration and sorrow Sunday at the vicious cycle of retaliation and violence that has dimmed the prospects for peace in Israel. Speaking at the Museum of Tolerance, Charles Feinstein said he was horrified by the wounding of his 20-year-old daughter, Ariela, who was hit by shrapnel in Saturday's explosions.

Stanley Sheinbaum was finally feeling better. He had been in his sickbed in the Regency Hotel for a week. But the news had just flashed on television that President Reagan was ordering the State Department to open a formal dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Sounding breathless, Sheinbaum pronounced himself greatly relieved. The day before, with much different emotions, he had watched PLO chairman Yasser Arafat's televised speech at the special session of the U.N.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III asked Morocco's King Hassan II on Saturday to nudge the Palestine Liberation Organization toward a compromise on peace talks with Israel, but the king--a longtime U.S. ally--offered no immediate commitment to help, U.S. officials said. Baker met with Hassan on the first leg of a three-day tour of North Africa aimed at enlisting more Arab governments in his Middle East diplomacy.

A car bomb killed three senior officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the Cypriot resort of Limassol on Sunday. The PLO, accusing Israel, vowed revenge. "They were murdered by the Israeli Mossad secret service," the PLO said in a statement from its Cyprus office. "This ugly new crime committed by Israeli intelligence will not pass without retribution. The people of Palestine and their revolution know how to teach the Israeli enemy a lesson they will not forget," it said.

To generations of Israeli fans, Yaffa Yarkoni has been "the Singer of the Wars." Whenever troops marched into battle, they could be sure Yarkoni would follow. Clad in fatigues, she raised spirits at the front with her rousing renditions of patriotic songs. So it seemed natural for Army Radio to interview the iconic singer in her home a few days before Israel's Independence Day this month.

Palestinian gunmen disguised as Israeli soldiers cut through a fence surrounding this isolated Jewish settlement Saturday and raced from house to house, shooting residents at breakfast, on the street and in their beds, the Israeli army said. Four people, including a 5-year-old girl, were killed, and seven others wounded in the brazen daylight rampage, the deadliest such attack since Israel launched a sweeping offensive against Palestinian militants in the West Bank a month ago.

Former President Clinton urged support for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East during an appearance Saturday night. "I think some of the negative publicity about Colin Powell's trip has been wrong," Clinton told reporters at a fund-raiser for Latino college students. "No matter how long they fight or how many people die, in the end if there's going to be peace there has to be security and normal relations with neighbors," Clinton said.

They were packed into the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, 1,400 cheering Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces. When Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert vowed to destroy Palestinian terrorism, he got an ovation. But one businessman, whose family donated $88,000 to the cause, was wringing his hands over Olmert's vow that the army would conduct itself honorably. "I believe we should not hold back," said Ronald Edelstein, belittling "this nonsense of morals, when our Arab colleagues have none."

From Tel Aviv to the Gaza Strip, the mood these days is full of gloom as two peoples contemplate the future with anger, fear, uncertainty. Israelis and Palestinians alike say that the fight-negotiate-fight scenario has gone on for 54 years and that nothing seems to have changed. But the fact is, everything has changed. When the Arab League met in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1967, its members passed a resolution on Israel based on three "noes": no negotiations, no relations, no peace.

Israel and the United Nations averted a confrontation Friday as Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed to delay a fact-finding mission to the West Bank until after the Israeli Cabinet meets Sunday to discuss the inquiry. Senior U.N. officials had said early Friday that the mission would depart as planned to the region today, despite an Israeli demand that the world body postpone the inquiry, ordered by the Security Council, into Israel's recent three-week occupation of the Jenin refugee camp.

Israel used roadblocks and a heavy police presence Friday to frustrate Yasser Arafat's call for a mass prayer demonstration at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque. Palestinians had predicted that more than 100,000 people would respond to the call by the Palestinian Authority president, intended to underline claims to the eastern portion of Jerusalem and to protest recent Israeli actions, including a slowdown in the peace process.

Israeli and Palestinian security officials have broken a Hamas military cell allegedly responsible for killing 11 Israelis, including three at a Tel Aviv cafe last month and a kidnapped soldier whose body was found Thursday. The two sides worked together on this case under prodding from the United States, despite a general freeze in Palestinian security cooperation since Israel broke off peace negotiations over the cafe bombing on March 21.

Israelis knew it as Ketziot. Palestinians called it Ansar 3. Both believed that the sprawling prison camp in the Negev desert was a painful piece of their shared past that they had left behind forever. But in the midst of Operation Defensive Shield, Israel's massive military sweep through the West Bank, the Israeli army announced that it had reopened Ketziot, closed six years ago as Israel and the Palestinians began implementing the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

Although the complete human toll is still unknown, the latest Middle East crisis looks set to hit Israelis squarely in their pocketbooks. The 19-month-old conflict, which has already devastated the much smaller Palestinian economy, is now propelling Israel toward financial instability, the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this week as it introduced a package of emergency austerity measures.