By
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM (AP) - Egypt's president arranged a meeting Wednesday between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel's foreign minister in a last-minute attempt to move Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations forward.
However, both sides agreed that there could be no peace agreement by the weekend, when President Clinton leaves office, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak held out little hope of an accord before he faces an election Feb. 6. Barak is trailing far behind hard-line rival Ariel Sharon in pre-election polls. He had hoped to have a peace deal to present to the Israeli people before the vote.
Palestinian official Ahmed Qureia said Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami would meet later Wednesday in Cairo. A negotiating session set for Jerusalem was called off because of the Cairo meeting.
"We want to know ... if the Israelis have new ideas," Qureia said.
Despite recent peace proposals by Clinton, the sides are still far apart on main issues in the conflict. Those include the fate of Palestinian refugees who want to return to Israel, the future of Jerusalem holy sites and the layout of a Palestinian state.
During Tuesday's talks, Israel presented a map to the Palestinians outlining Israel's vision of borders of a Palestinian state, said Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, the chief negotiator. But he said the map was unacceptable.
He said it showed Palestinian territory in the West Bank split into three cantons divided by blocs of Jewish settlements, which would also cut off Palestinian neighborhoods in east Jerusalem from the West Bank.
"This will contradict completely our basic needs ... to have a continuous homeland, to have the West Bank as one unit and to have Jerusalem as part of the West Bank," Abed Rabbo said.
Debate over the extent of concessions for peace with the Palestinians dominated television campaign commercials in Israel, which were first screened Tuesday. The ads are confined to once-a-day blocs on TV and radio stations.
In his main ad, Barak rejected the Palestinian demand that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants, nearly four million people, be given the right to return to their former homes in Israel. He also brushed aside the Palestinian insistence on sovereignty over a disputed Jerusalem holy site - the spot where the Al Aqsa Mosque compound was built over the ruins of the biblical Jewish Temples.
Sharon's ads reflected his rejection of Barak's readiness for far-reaching compromise for peace with the Palestinians.
Clinton's peace proposals, which call for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, 95 percent of the West Bank and Arab areas of Jerusalem, are the basis for the peace talks. Israel and the Palestinians have accepted the ideas in principle but have added serious reservations.
As diplomatic efforts continued, Israeli troops were easing a blockade in the Gaza Strip.
The blockade was reimposed on more than one million Palestinians after the weekend killing of a Jewish settler by Palestinians. But, by Wednesday, Israel had opened the Palestinian international airport, a passenger crossing into Egypt and a truck route into Israel.
At the Netzarim junction, which controls the main north-south thoroughfare in the strip, hundreds of Palestinian cars were backed up Wednesday morning, waiting for soldiers to open the road. Taxi driver Shuki Abu Ali kicked a soccer ball around a makeshift field near the junction, waiting for permission to cross.
"The Israelis treat us like this ball," Abu Ali complained.
In another development, the head of the official Palestinian television station was shot and killed by three masked men in Gaza.
Hisham Miki, 54, was a close ally of Arafat. But senior Palestinian officials said privately there was no indication that Israel was involved in Miki's death.
