By
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators resumed high-level peace talks Tuesday, but they failed to resolve key disputes despite a looming weekend deadline. With the outlook bleak for concluding a peace accord, President Clinton's mediator put a scheduled trip to the region on indefinite hold.
Mediator Dennis Ross had planned to confer with Israeli and Palestinian leaders here, but administration officials confirmed that the journey was off for now. That could mean Ross' long career as a Mideast mediator will end without a final burst of diplomacy in the region.
Despite the lack of a breakthrough in Jerusalem, the leader of the Palestinian negotiating team said yesterday's session was "serious and deep," and the sides agreed to keep talking.
At the start of the three-hour meeting, the Palestinians protested Israel's renewed blockade of the Gaza Strip, imposed in response to a Jewish settler's weekend death at the hands of Palestinians, said the chief Palestinian negotiator, Ahmed Qureia.
The Palestinians also complained about retaliatory attacks by Jewish settlers, who rampaged on Palestinian farms in Gaza Monday and early yesterday to protest the settlers' killing. Israeli police said two settlers have been detained and that there might be more arrests.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the negotiating session, during which teams led by Qureia and Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami met in Jerusalem.
The location was kept secret to avoid media coverage. Another round of talks is scheduled for today.
"The discussions ... were very serious and deep," Qureia said. "We tried to see ways how we can bridge the gaps between the two positions, but I cannot say that we bridged the gaps."
President Clinton's peace proposals calling for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, 95 percent of the West Bank and Arab areas of Jerusalem are the basis for the talks. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are trying to produce a joint document before Clinton leaves office Saturday.
However, both have said chances of success are slim. Yesterday, Qureia said, the Israelis did not present maps that translate Clinton's ideas into a concrete land offer.
Both sides have accepted Clinton's ideas in principle but added serious reservations. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said he would not give the Palestinians sovereignty over the disputed Jerusalem site, where the Al Aqsa Mosque compound was built over the ruins of the biblical Jewish Temples. And the Palestinians are reluctant to compromise on their demand that all refugees and their descendants - about 4 million people - be given the right to return to their former homes in Israel, where 5 million Jews live.
After the negotiating session, Barak convened his Peace Cabinet, a group of ministers briefed on developments in the negotiations. And yesterday evening, Israeli and Palestinian security officials were to hold talks at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza. The Israeli blockade of Gaza was expected to be discussed.
As part of its travel restrictions on more than one million Palestinians, Israel blocked major roads, shut down the Palestinian airport and closed crossings into Israel and Egypt. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers were retaliating for 30-year-old Roni Tsalah's death by attacking Palestinian farms and homes in the southern Gaza Strip.
Farmer Amin An-Najar, 42, who owns land near the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis, said dozens of settlers threw stones and shot at homes in his neighborhood.
He said four of his greenhouses, where he grew cucumbers and tomatoes, were burned to the ground and that his irrigation system was destroyed. A cousin's tractor was burned in the settler attack, An-Najar said.
Israeli police spokesman Yossi Koppel said he was unaware of a rampage early yesterday, but that settlers involved in Monday's attacks on Palestinian property would be prosecuted. Assailants would be identified with the help of TV footage, and several dozen people might be arrested, Koppel said.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, the body of a suspected informer for Israel was found in the village of Ajah and dozens of alleged collaborators were rounded up in the town of Hebron.
Officials in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement said masked men seized the victim from his home late Monday night. It was not immediately clear whether the killing was sanctioned by the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian officials say Israel has used informers in its campaign of tracking down and killing local Palestinian leaders. Palestinians have attributed more than a dozen such deaths to Israeli commandos in the past two months.
Over the weekend, two Palestinians were executed in public by firing squads after being convicted of helping Israeli forces kill an Islamic militant bombmaker and a leading Fatah gunman. The executions sparked international outrage.
In an apparent attempt to deflect criticism, Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu Medein announced Monday that collaborators with Israel would be given amnesty if they turned themselves in within the next 45 days.
