Palestinian Leaders

Military helicopters whirred noisily overhead, drowning out the sound of bulldozers. Sharpshooters lurked in the nearby hills to protect a handful of construction workers. Brushing aside Palestinian objections and international criticism, the Israeli government went ahead yesterday with groundbreaking for the first phase of a 6,500-unit Jewish settlement in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem. The Har Homa project is the largest and most controversial settlement since the early 1980s and sets the stage for a fresh clash of wills and weapons between Israelis and Palestinians.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright yesterday declared that she would not meet again with Israeli or Palestinian leaders until they were ready to make the "hard decisions" needed to break their stalemate. "I'm not going to pretend to you here that I have accomplished a great deal," Albright told U.S. reporters as she departed for Syria and, later, Egypt. "I will come back here whenever the leaders have made hard decisions, but I am not going to come back here to tread water.

SEND IN the marines. Or somebody. With a suicide bus bombing in the middle of Jerusalem that killed 16 and injured 94 yesterday - and the revenge Israeli attack against a Hamas leader that left nine dead in Gaza - the delicate breeze of hope that floated through Aqaba last week has faded once again. There is hardly any oxygen left to help kindle a candle for peace, let alone follow any sort of road map to that destination. Right now, the level of hopelessness ought to be classified as a weapon of mass destruction that threatens the entire world.

There was some hope when Secretary of State George P. Shultz set off on his Mideast peace mission that Palestinian leaders would finally see the light and agree to talk to him. Instead, they have tried to blow him to smithereens. So much for occupying the moral high ground. At a time when sympathy for the Palestinian cause is at an all-time high, Yasir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah division, has proudly claimed credit for yesterday's bungled attempt to dispatch America's chief envoy.

Twenty months of Palestinian intifada and the crash in the once-booming high-tech sector have devastated the Israeli economy, leaving it in its worst shape since the 1950s. The conflict has, as well, left the Palestinians and their fledgling economy in more dire straits than ever. The question is whether the intense economic pressures on both sides will cause something that bloodshed has not: A public demand for a change in the political approach of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the moribund Mideast peace talks.

Israel is looking to the United States to block any U.N. Security Council resolutions that would condemn Israel's barrier in the West Bank, the foreign minister said in remarks broadcast yesterday. The comments by the foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, came a day after the United Nations' International Court of Justice ruled that the parts of the barrier being built in the West Bank should be torn down. "The issue will go to the Security Council because the [Palestinians] can muster an automatic majority in the U.N. General Assembly," he told Israel Radio.

Resisting pressure from President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday staked out a hard-line position in Middle East peace talks and defended his plans to continue building a security fence around Palestinian areas. Four days after Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, urged Bush to seek Israeli concessions, Sharon insisted that progress could come only after "a complete cessation" of violence against Israelis. He complained that Palestinian leaders were "doing nothing to eliminate or dismantle" terrorist organizations.

As Israelis and Palestinians killed one another for a third straight day, American diplomats rued the violence and lobbied hard for a face-to-face meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his most senior advisers on the Middle East continued their around-the-clock telephone diplomacy in New York, where Christopher has been attending the opening of the 51st United Nations General Assembly. Christopher urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to find ways to step back from violence that has killed 67 people since Israel's unilateral decision to open a disputed tunnel entrance at a holy site near the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

As the Palestinian uprising nears the end of its second year, the decision by Israel's inner cabinet Friday to turn down a promising peace intiative makes no sense. At a time when the peace process is stopped dead, the plan, proposed by Egypt, called for Israelis and Palestinians to start a dialogue in Cairo. The topic: how to arrange elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip to choose Palestinian leaders who would negotiate a peace settlement with Israel. The cabinet was divided - as all of Israel is divided - on whether to take the risk of talking to the enemy.

I feel sorry for Colin Powell. Everyone expects the secretary of state to "do something" about stopping the frightening escalation of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Now the much-anticipated Mitchell commission report on that violence has laid out a road map for a cease-fire, and calls for U.S. intervention are rising. I'm sympathetic with Powell's low-key response. For the Mitchell report can work only if wise Israeli and Palestinian leaders use it as a cover to back down from pointless fighting.

JERUSALEM - President Obama urged Israelis on Thursday to move decisively in a spirit of self-preservation and empathy to secure a lasting peace, but he delivered an even sharper ultimatum to Palestinians to drop conditions that have held up a new round of negotiations. His evening address at the Jerusalem International Convention Center signaled a shift away from the balance he has sought to maintain between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since taking office - and toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he has had a stormy relationship, at least until this trip.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The remains of former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat will be exhumed Tuesday as part of a renewed investigation into his death, a Palestinian investigator said Saturday. Arafat died in November 2004 in a French military hospital, a month after suddenly falling ill. Palestinian officials claim he was poisoned by Israel, but have not presented evidence. Israel has denied such allegations. Earlier this year, the detection of a lethal radioactive substance in biological traces on Arafat's clothing sparked a new investigation.

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian prime minister pulled out of a planned meeting with Israel's leader on Tuesday, torpedoing what was set to be the highest-level talks between the sides in nearly two years. The meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attended by two lower level Palestinian officials, lasted less than an hour and ended with a brief joint statement pledging to seek peace. It signaled little progress had been made. Even before Salam Fayyad's pullout, both sides played down expectations for the meeting, which the Palestinians portrayed as a last-ditch effort to salvage peace talks before the U.S. presidential election season.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a complex issue, one that deserves serious scholarship and open, civil debate. Expect to see none of that next weekend on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement is staging a "conference. " Instead, as we should have learned from many past BDS events at colleges around the country, this will be an exercise in disinformation and propaganda, a call for political and economic warfare, and an attempt to foment hatred of Israel.

ON BOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned yesterday that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the Middle East and said Israeli leaders must restart negotiations with the Palestinians and work to restore relations with Egypt and Turkey. In a blunt assessment made as he was traveling to Israel, Panetta said the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East makes it critical for the Israelis to find ways to communicate with other nations in the region. "There's not much question in my mind that they maintain that [military]

UNITED NATIONS - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas strongly suggested Saturday that he would reject a peacemaking blueprint put forward by international mediators, saying he would not agree to any proposal that disregarded Palestinian conditions for the resumption of peace talks. Abbas, who returned to the West Bank on Saturday after submitting a statehood bid at the United Nations a day earlier, told reporters accompanying him that he was still studying the proposal by the peacemaking quartet - the United States, European Union, United Nations, and Russia.

JERUSALEM - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas formally announced Friday that he would ask the U.N. Security Council next week to endorse his statehood bid, putting the United States in line for a showdown with the Palestinians and their supporters across the Arab world. So far, efforts by the Obama administration and European diplomats to dissuade Abbas from presenting his U.N. bid have failed. The White House opposes the move and has said it would exercise the veto it wields at the Security Council, but Abbas left himself some room to maneuver.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian president said Friday he would ask the U.N. Security Council next week to endorse his people's decades-long quest for statehood but emphasized that he did not seek to isolate or delegitimize Israel. Mahmoud Abbas' plan to seek full membership at United Nations and bypass negotiations with Israel sets the stage for a diplomatic confrontation with Israel and the United States, which has indicated it would veto the measure in the Security Council.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Robert M. Gates made the first trip by a U.S. defense chief to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday, capping a day of back-to-back meetings to press Israeli and Palestinian leaders to push ahead with the peace process despite the recent violence. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad sounded willing to renew efforts toward peace with Israel. But he told the Pentagon chief that Palestinian entreaties to Israeli leaders had been publicly rebuffed and met with vows for retribution for this week's deadly bus-stop bombing in Jerusalem and mortar attacks on Israel from Gaza.