Mideast peace talks suspended

The Washington Post

TABA, Egypt - Israel suspended peace talks with the Palestinians yesterday after masked gunmen seized two Israelis from a restaurant in the Palestinian controlled city of Tulkarm on the West Bank and shot them execution-style.

The operations wing of a radical Palestinian group, the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, took responsibility for the killings, saying the two victims were members of Israel's Shin Bet security agency.

Israeli media reported the two were restaurant owners who had gone to Tulkarm with an Arab-Israeli friend to shop for earthenware pottery, a local specialty.

The killings seemed likely to erode already weak Israeli support for the peace talks even as they had begun to make progress. They were followed by an immediate recall of the leaders of Israel's delegation from the negotiations at this Egyptian resort near Eilat.

The discussions were billed as a "marathon" round of bargaining that might last as long as 10 days.

But the office of Prime Minister Ehud Barak released a statement saying he will hold "consultations" with the Israeli negotiating team today to determine whether they will resume at all. In the meantime all contact will stop.

The talks were in their third day and both sides indicated differences were narrowing on issues like how much additional land Israel will turn over to a future Palestinian state.

New proposals on control of religious sites in Jerusalem were also on the table, with Barak telling high school students in Israel he supported "joint management" of an expanded "holy basin" of Jewish,Christian and Muslim religious sites.

Despite that breath of optimism, the fresh violence on the West Bank could mean the end of Barak's last-ditch effort to forge at least the outlines of a peace agreement before Feb. 6 elections in which he is running against the conservative Likud Party leader and former defense minister, Ariel Sharon.

Barak called the killings "horrendous" and pledged to hunt down those responsible.

Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority also condemned the killings and said they were carried out by "irresponsible and suspicious elements."

The statement was an unusual move that suggested an eagerness to move forward with the talks and marked a breach in the alliance Palestinian officials had maintained with Hamas during the recent fighting.

As the negotiations began on Sunday, Israeli officials had noted a substantial decrease in protests, shootings and other violence after 3 1/2 months in which clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have killed more than 360 people, most of them Palestinians.

The new killings not only shattered that lull, but could bolster Sharon's arguments that Israel must take a tougher line with the Palestinians, not try to woo them with election-season concessions.

Sharon, who has built up a large lead over Barak in the race for prime minister, said in a statement that "We are talking about an unceasing chain of terror. We should stop the negotiations immediately as it is impossible to conduct negotiations under the threat of terrorist acts."

Tulkarm has been a frequent flashpoint during the recent Israeli-Palestinian clashes, and few Israelis have ventured there since the fighting began.

According to Israeli media reports, the two were abducted along with an Arab colleague, who was released.

The two Jewish Israelis were then shot in the head and their bodies were dumped in a field close to a nearby Palestinian refugee camp.

Palestinian police later found the bodies and turned them over to Israeli authorities.

The peace talks had been proceeding comparatively well.

Beginning Sunday, the Palestinian and Israeli participants had broken into working groups to address the major outstanding issues.