Palestinian Leader Meets With Militants

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas met with Palestinian militants Tuesday to try to negotiate an end to attacks on Israelis, as Israel weighed the implications of releasing uprising leader Marwan Barghouti as part of a possible cease-fire deal.

The potential release of Barghouti, a Fatah leader who is probably the second most popular Palestinian figure after Yasser Arafat, could strengthen a new U.S.-backed peace plan if he were to actively campaign on its behalf. From prison, where Israel is holding him on murder charges, Barghouti has been working through envoys to persuade the militant group Hamas to sign on to the truce agreement with Abbas.

The prospects of the cease-fire effort appeared to be gaining some momentum as a result of tremendous Palestinian, Egyptian and international pressure backed up by the prospect of a serious Israeli campaign to wipe the militants out. A deal would apparently require Israel to commit to ending killings of militant leaders.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a hard-line Hamas leader, said Tuesday that the group was only considering an end to attacks on Israeli civilians inside Israel, and would in any case continue targeting soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, a formulation Israel rejects.

The militants have also demanded Israel stop its targeted killings of their leaders and other military strikes, release prisoners and withdraw to positions held before the outbreak of fighting in September 2000.

Israel has said it would continue its offensive against Hamas and has so far reacted with great suspicion to Abbas’ idea of a long-term cease-fire, fearing the violent groups would use the time to regroup, rearm and plan new attacks.

Israeli officials are demanding Abbas crack down on the groups. Abbas has said he will not use force against the militants for fear of triggering a civil war. Under the U.S.-map “road map” peace plan Abbas must “arrest, disrupt and restrain” those planning attacks and dismantle “terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell was to travel to Israel on Friday. Speaking en route to Cambodia, he lent support to Israel’s demand for a crackdown.

Ultimately, Hamas and other terrorist organizations “will not only have to stop these terrorist attacks. We have to eliminate their capability to do so,” he said. “We have to come down hard on organizations such as Hamas.”

Abbas’ meeting with leaders of all the Palestinian militant factions Tuesday evening was part of a strong international push for a rapid agreement to end the violence. In recent days, Egyptian mediators traveled to Gaza to try to persuade the militants to lay down their arms.

“Maybe, after 24 hours, there will be positive results,” Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said in Cairo on Tuesday. A source close to the talks said U.S. mediators would press Israel to end targeted killings.

As part of the road map, which envisions an end to 32 months of violence and the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005, Israel must take down settlement outposts in the West Bank and halt attacks “undermining trust” with the Palestinians.

But a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem, Israeli helicopter strikes in Gaza and other violence have left the road map’s future in doubt just two weeks after it was launched by President Bush at a summit in Jordan.

John Wolf, a U.S. envoy sent here with a team of monitors to supervise the road map’s implementation, met Tuesday morning with Abbas.

Israeli officials said they offered to withdraw their forces from most of the Gaza Strip and at least one West Bank town – areas that are supposed to be under Palestinian control but were reoccupied during the current fighting.

But a senior Palestinian security source said Tuesday that Israel’s withdrawal plan consisted of nothing more than moving a few tanks out of the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

The Palestinians wanted Israel to remove roadblocks and troops from the main roads in Gaza so residents would feel an immediate improvement in their quality of life, but they refused, the source said.

Earlier Friday, Arafat told Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, that Israel would release the uprising leader in the next two days, she said.

Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein wrote to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that it would be “inconceivable” to release Barghouti, whom he called a “first-rate architect of terrorism,” before the end of his trial for his alleged role in attacks that killed 26 Israelis.

“Including Barghouti in some package deal with the Palestinians should not even be considered,” he wrote. “The voice of our brothers’ blood forbids it.”

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom denied that Barghouti’s release was being considered as part of the cease-fire package.

Over the years, Israel has released hundreds of jailed militants – some in exchange for its own prisoners and some in the context of peace agreements.

Barghouti would be the most prominent Palestinian to be released since Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was traded in 1997 for a pair of Israeli operatives jailed in Jordan after a botched assassination attempt on leading Hamas figure Khaled Mashal.

Meanwhile, violence continued Tuesday as clashes erupted between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in the Balata and Askar refugee camps in the West Bank.

A 14-year-old Palestinian was shot in the leg with live bullets in Balata, and an AP photographer was lightly injured by rubber bullets. An army spokesman said shots were fired at its troops in Balata and it responded with warning shots.