A top Palestinian negotiator says there will be no Mideast peace deal before the Israeli elections next month.
The comments by Saeb Erekat poured more cold water on the possibility of an agreement before President Clinton leaves office in two weeks.
“I don’t expect a deal will be reached before the Israeli elections on Feb. 6, even after Clinton leaves office, because of the sensitivities of the issues and because the gaps between us are too wide on these issues,” Erekat said.
Israeli negotiator Gilead Sher was equally pessimistic.
After talks with Clinton on Friday, Sher said time had run out for a deal with the Palestinians and the “best that could be hoped for” was a declaration by Clinton outlining a future accord.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said peace talks will continue when George W. Bush becomes president.
“The Palestinians will continue [the negotiations], with the same momentum, with the new American administration,” he said.
Clinton, who leaves the White House Jan. 20, is trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians to revive the talks based on a blueprint he presented last month.
As part of that effort, CIA chief George Tenet is to meet in Cairo today with senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials.
But the office of Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan said he would not attend as long as “Israeli aggression against Palestinian people everywhere is still going on.”
Dahlan’s deputy, Rashid Abu Shbak, said the meeting seems “doomed to fail.”
“We can’t do anything if the Israelis don’t show any seriousness toward cooling down the situation,” Shbak said.
To start with, he said, Israel should lift its closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and its barricades within Gaza, measures that bar Palestinians from entering Israel and limit movement within the Palestinian territories.
A wave of violence that began in late September has killed 359 people, most of them Palestinians.
Chanting, “revenge, revenge,” 1,000 people in the West Bank town of Hebron buried one of the latest victims – an 18-year-old woman killed in crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen.
Arij Jabili was shot in the heart Friday when bullets pierced the walls of her home near the Jewish settlement of Beit Hagai in the West Bank.
Gunmen fired into the air around the woman’s corpse, which was draped in the Palestinian flag and that of militant group Hamas. “We will avenge the blood of our martyrs,” mourners cried.