THE Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, has said the attack on a rabbi in the West Bank city of Hebron has increased his resolve to press ahead with talks starting on Sunday on a final peace deal with the PLO.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are due to meet at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Taba on Sunday to start crucial negotiations on the permanent status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.
Under peace deals which began in 1993, Israel must withdraw its troops from parts of Hebron, the last major West Bank city which the Jewish state agreed to hand over to the PLO, before the two sides begin negotiating a final peace settlement.
Palestinians fear the stabbing of a 72 year old Jewish settler rabbi in Hebron on Wednesday by an unidentified attacker would delay Israeli redeployment, originally scheduled for March. Israel occupied Hebron and the West Bank in 1967 after defeating an alliance of Arab nations.
But Mr Peres, returning from a high profile visit to the US and France, tried to allay Palestinian fears. He said he would honour the commitment he made to Mr Yasser Arafat after the Palestinian leader got clauses in the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction scrapped.
"All my life I honoured agreements and this time I also intend to do so. Unless there are weighty security arguments, I will of course honour the agreement," Mr Peres told reporters on the aircraft back to Israel.
Asked if he would be influenced by the stabbing in Hebron, Mr Peres said it highlighted the very reasons Israel wanted to withdraw its troops. "Why do we need to guard over 160,000 Arab residents of Hebron?" he said.
Meanwhile, in an interview published in Paris yesterday, Mr Peres said the closure of Palestinian ruled areas would remain in force until Israel's May 29th elections.
Asked by the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur when the closure, imposed after a series of suicide bomb attacks in Israel in March, would be lifted, Mr Peres replied: "Not before the elections. I am sure Arafat understands why. The result of the election hinges on security."
The closure has caused widespread economic hardship in the already poor areas, but Israeli officials have cautioned that opponents of the Palestinian Israeli peace process would seek to resume suicide bomb attacks if border crossings were reopened.
Mr Peres is due to meet security officials today to discuss when and how to implement the redeployment, Israeli officials said.
Negotiators said Sunday's session would be mostly ceremonial, with the two sides discussing an agenda before adjourning until after Israel's May 29th national elections. The talks are expected to last about two years.
A UN investigation into the killing of more than 100 Lebanese civilians last month at a UN base has concluded that the base itself was targeted by Israeli fire, the London based Jane's Information Group said yesterday.
In its weekly foreign affairs' newsletter the group said a team appointed to investigate the massacre at the Qana base had found 25 artillery rounds, at least seven of which had "proximity fuses".
"These shells explode about seven metres above the ground in order to kill and maim the maximum number of people," the newsletter said in what it called an "exclusive" on the report's findings.
Israel has said it was replying to Hizbullah fire from a position a few hundred metres away. The newsletter said an Israeli unit had asked for cover while retreating from Hizbullah fire, but that the Israeli bombardment which hit the base had started up 15 minutes later, "long after the Israeli resistance fighters had disappeared."