BBC (Tuesday): Jerusalem summit gets under way

From the BBC Online
Dated Tuesday June 21 13:37 GMT (6:37 am PDT)

Jerusalem summit gets under way

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas have begun a summit meeting in Jerusalem.

The two leaders, meeting for the second time since Mr Abbas came to power, are due to discuss security, but there appears little hope of progress.

Ahead of the summit, Israeli security forces seized 50 suspected Palestinian militants across the West Bank.

Those arrested are believed to belong to the Islamic Jihad group, Israeli military sources said.

Read more.

violence.

Mubarek has also said he intends to visit Israel.

The arrests follow several attacks by Islamic Jihad, which killed two people and injured another, plus rocket attacks. More from Ha'aretz:

snip

Two Israelis have been killed by Palestinians over the past several days in the territories and the snowballing violence is expected to dominate the agenda of the meeting, held under heavy security in the prime minister's official residence in central Jerusalem.

The Israel Defense Forces will no longer exercise restraint with regard to Islamic Jihad militants because their attacks demonstrate they do not consider themselves bound by a truce agreement, a senior IDF officer said Tuesday. Israeli security forces arrested Monday night 50 Islamic Jihad militants, not all of them considered "ticking time bombs," as part of a crackdown on the group following their recent terror attacks on settlements.

"Islamic Jihad has taken itself absolutely out of the agreement with its attacks, and so from our view, we are operating fully against them, as we did before," said Lt. Col. Erez Winner, a senior commander in the West Bank. "Anyone we know who is affiliated with this organization is a legitimate target."

snip

Sharon is also sticking to his position that now is not the time to discuss the diplomatic moves that will follow the disengagement. The next step, he will tell Abbas, will depend entirely on the PA's efforts to end the violence and on the success of those efforts. In particular, he will demand that Abbas confiscate weapons from the terrorist organizations and prevent the launching of Qassam rockets into southern Israel and, until their evacuation, the Gaza settlements. Part of the meeting will also probably be devoted to finalizing the agreement that Sharon and Abbas have reached regarding the razing of the settlers' houses following the disengagement. In addition, Sharon will present his view of what should be done with the border crossings between Gaza, Egypt and Israel following the pullout. He intends to tell the Palestinians that they will receive full control of all land, sea and air crossings into Gaza, but only after a trial period during which they prove that they can prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Strip.




http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/590172.html