Deal on Israeli Withdrawal Collapses After Early Hope
As Israeli military forces pressed their offensive on Wednesday, killing at least six Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority provisionally accepted Israel's conditions for a withdrawal from parts of the occupied territories.

But early today, after a joint meeting of security officials, Palestinian officials accused the Israelis of changing the offer, and any agreement appeared to have already foundered.

The basic terms of the Israeli offer — a withdrawal, in this case first from Gaza and then other areas occupied by the army, only after the Palestinians ensure tranquillity — have been repeatedly agreed on and then ignored in the past year.

The diplomatic tumult occurred as Mr. Arafat dispatched three top aides for talks in Washington with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other administration officials.

The exchange was rare in that it involved high-level, bilateral talks, but it was familiar in that it swiftly appeared to implode in recriminations. The gestures toward a deal came as Israelis, fearful of attack, seemed increasingly uncertain how to protect themselves, and as Palestinians seemed increasingly despairing of freedom from Israeli military control and economic blockade.

The police released statistics today demonstrating that Israel's predicament is continuing to worsen as the conflict grinds on. In the first six months of this year, 238 Israelis died in Palestinian attacks, compared with 68 in the corresponding period a year ago, the police said. Those statistics do not include soldiers.

Many more Palestinians died in the same period, as Israel conducted airstrikes and ground offensives in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In one telling statistic, the police reported that in all of 1999, before the current conflict, 12 bombs were detonated or discovered in Israel. From Jan. 1 though July 18 this year, that number was 465.
The terms of the Israeli deal were proposed this week in a meeting with Palestinian officials by Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. He offered the Gaza Strip as a test case, saying that if Palestinian security forces demonstrated there that they would ensure calm, Israeli forces would withdraw from recently seized land in Gaza. Reports of the precise proposal differed, but Palestinians said that Mr. Ben-Eliezer indicated that the same deal applied to Bethlehem, in the West Bank.

Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian minister, said on Wednesday that the Palestinians had given "preliminary approval" for the plan, pending full clarification of the offer in the late-night meeting Wednesday.

But after a follow-up meeting of the two sides, the deal, which some Palestinian leaders had called a sellout, appeared to be off. Afterward, Nabil Aburdeineh, a close aide to Mr. Arafat, told The Associated Press that Israel had imposed new conditions that were "impossible to accept or even to implement." Declaring the meeting a failure, he said that Israel had not mentioned withdrawing from Bethlehem, just Gaza.

Israeli forces are now operating freely in what by treaty is Palestinian-controlled territory in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. After back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem in June, Israel took military control of seven of the eight major Palestinian cities, including Bethlehem, imposing 24-hour curfews that have all but emptied streets and brought industry to a halt.

"The city is still paralyzed," said Hanna Nasser, Bethlehem's mayor. He said Israel was lifting the curfew for three or four hours at a stretch — not long or predictably enough for businesses to function. "Bethlehem, from the commercial point of view, is dying," he said. "From the social point of view, it is dying."

The Israeli Army said it was working to ease restrictions here and in Hebron, but there was scant evidence of that here today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/08/international/middleeast/08MIDE.html