MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12/31/2001: Yasser Arafat remains under town siege in Ramallah, and his personal as well as historical nemesis, Ariel Sharon, continues to attempt to provoke more Palestinian hatred and violence which he will then use to justify still further Israeli military escalations, potentially cataclysmic in the year about to begin. With the other developments taking place in the world at the moment the Israelis are preparing the way to use their overwhelming military force, in juxtaposition to the divisions and impotence all around them among the Arabs and the Muslims, to enforce their own "new world order" in the Middle East, just as the Americans are doing worldwide in close coordination.

JABALYA, Gaza Strip, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Israel's killing of six Palestinians in the Gaza Strip drew threats of revenge on Monday from militants defying President Yasser Arafat's call to halt attacks on Israelis.

The six men were killed in confrontations on Sunday.

"We will pursue the attacks and painful blows against the Zionist enemy occupying our land," activists of the Popular Resistance Committee chanted at the funeral of one of its leaders who was among the six killed.

The committee, which includes members of Arafat's Fatah and the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad organisations, said Ismael Abu al-Qumsan, its leader in the northern Gaza Strip, and two other gunmen were killed in a shootout with Israeli soldiers.

The army said its forces killed another three Palestinians in a separate incident in Gaza on Sunday. An army spokesman called the men "terrorists" and said they were shot as they approached a military vehicle at twilight.

He said soldiers found knives on their bodies. Palestinians had no information on their identity.

The violence broke a two-week lull that began after Arafat, under intense international pressure to rein in groups behind suicide bombings in Israel, called for a ceasefire and his security forces began rounding up dozens of militants as Israel has demanded.

Arafat told supporters marking Fatah's 37th anniversary in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday that his people would not bow to Israeli attempts "to humiliate them" by besieging them in their cities.

He has been confined to Ramallah since Israel launched a military offensive after a wave of suicide attacks.

"One day a child, a little boy or little girl, will place a flag of Palestine on the churches and mosques of Jerusalem," an emotional Arafat told a crowd of thousands.

Waving olive branches and Palestinian flags, church leaders and hundreds of protesters marched towards an Israeli checkpoint at the entrance to Bethlehem, where Israel prevented Arafat, who is a Muslim, from making his annual Christmas pilgrimage.

Blocked from going towards Jerusalem by a line of Israeli troops, the crowd said prayers before returning to Bethlehem. "The message is that peace and justice are not impossible. It is a matter of ending the occupation," said Michel Sabbah, the first Palestinian Latin Patriarch for the Holy Land, before setting off for Jerusalem in his car.

Palestinian officials have said U.S. Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni should now return to the region to resume a mission he broke off in mid-December after a surge in violence.

The Israeli army said on Sunday the number of attacks on Israelis had dropped from 18 a day to 11 in the two weeks since Arafat's ceasefire appeal in a speech to the Palestinian people.

"Some of the things we demanded, (Arafat) did," Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said on Monday.

"We said he should say in Arabic in his voice to stop the terror, to stop the terror everywhere... after that we told him to reduce the incitement. There is a reduction of incitement," Peres told Israel Radio.

"After that we told them to stop the mortar fire. They stopped the mortar fire... they did some things in the right direction but not conclusively," he said, referring to mortar bomb attacks against Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking after a breakfast meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the dovish Peres described his ongoing talks with Ahmed Korei, the Palestinian parliament speaker also known as Abu Ala, as "enriched" ceasefire negotiations.

Sharon has insisted that Israel will not hold peace talks with the Palestinians until a 16-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation ended.

But Israeli media reports and Palestinian officials said Peres and Korei had raised ideas envisaging Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state on 42 percent of the land in the West Bank and Gaza as an interim step towards a final peace deal.

In another sign of possible fence-mending, Israeli President Moshe Katzav confirmed an Israel Radio report that he was approached by a former Arab member of Israel's parliament about the possibility of addressing the Palestinian legislature.

The report said the plan called for Katzav to offer a year-long ceasefire in the speech.

Asked about the proposal, Katzav told reporters: "An interesting proposition has been raised, which I did not reject... I am willing to go to the ends of the earth to help move the peace process forward and achieve a truce."

There was no immediate Palestinian or Israeli government comment on the reported initiative. Katzav, who holds a largely ceremonial post, said his final response would depend on the position of the government and Sharon.

Mid-East Realities

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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/12/535.htm