JERUSALEM — Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat has proposed that U.S. troops patrol Hebron to help provide security for Jewish settlers in the West Bank town.
While Israel and the United States immediately rejected the plan, Israel was considering whether it would form joint Hebron patrols with Palestinian police that could pursue terrorists in Palestinian areas.
The issue of anti-terrorist patrols appeared to be one of the last major sticking points in Israeli-Palestinian talks over Hebron by press time midweek.
Arafat made the proposal to bring in U.S. troops Tuesday during a joint news conference in Jericho with Jordan’s King Hussein.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry said no international force was being considered to patrol Hebron.
“It is not under active consideration,” he said before talks with visiting Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai.
An unarmed group of international observers is now stationed in Hebron.
David Bar-Illan, a senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said American troops could likely become targets of Palestinian terrorist groups opposed to the peace accords.
“I doubt very much whether bringing home American troops to America in body bags is going to further the peace process,” Bar-Illan said.
Arafat’s proposal came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators continued to discuss a revised accord on redeploying Israeli troops from most of Hebron. For Israel, one of the most sensitive issues is security for the 450 Jewish settlers, who live among the town’s 100,000 Palestinians.
Israel was also studying the possibility of forming joint mobile units with the Palestinian Authority to solve the Hebron impasse.
The major sticking point in the talks is the Israeli army’s insistence on being able to pursue terrorists in Palestinian-controlled parts of Hebron. It remains unclear whether the Israeli army would accept the idea of joint Israeli-Palestinian patrols. In remarks in Jericho Tuesday, Arafat suggested that such units would be acceptable to him.
Hussein’s visit to Jericho was his first to the West Bank since Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1988, Jordan renounced claims to the West Bank, saying that it was up to the Palestinians to determine their fate.
The Jordanian monarch gave full recognition of his acceptance of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank when he declared, “I am happy to be on Palestinian land.”
Hussein promised his full support to the Palestinians and the peace process.
“We want to see a speeding up of the implementation of everything that had been agreed upon and to continue until we achieve a just and lasting peace on the Palestinian-Israeli track,” he told the joint news conference.
Arafat had driven over the Allenby Bridge to Amman on Monday for initial talks with Hussein. On Tuesday morning the king, an accomplished pilot, flew the helicopter bringing himself, Arafat and Jordanian Prime Minister Abdel Karim al-Kabariti to Jericho. Awaiting them was a red-carpet welcome, with an honor guard, self-rule authority officials, Palestinian dignitaries and hundreds of applauding Palestinians.
Both Palestinian and Israeli officials denied reports that Netanyahu had been invited to Jericho for a three-way summit. But Bar-Illan added that with the Hebron agreement close to conclusion, a meeting between the prime minister and Arafat could take place “in the very near future.”
While Israeli officials maintained Tuesday that negotiators were close to settling a Hebron redeployment agreement, Palestinians were less optimistic.
Foreign Minister David Levy, speaking at a meeting of the Likud Knesset faction, accused the Palestinians of trying to cast a pessimistic shadow on the talks. Only about “10 percent of the outstanding issues remained to be solved,” he said.
But Arafat said the talks were deadlocked. “Until now, there is no progress in any of the committees in the negotiations,” he said.
Israel and the Palestinians agreed to delay by another day the formal negotiations at the Egyptian resort of Taba. The formal talks were originally scheduled to resume Monday, but at the suggestion of the United States, they were postponed.
U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who has been mediating the talks, said the sides should allow more time for informal contacts to bridge the outstanding differences.