A top Israeli security official accused Yasser Arafat's security forces Friday of not doing enough to prevent terrorism, while a militant enemy of the peace process vowed a fresh suicide attack on the Jewish state.
As fears of a new spate of bombings in Israel loomed, the head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Ami Ayalon, told the Cabinet that Arafat's security forces had slowed down their cooperation with Israel, Israeli radio reported.The new accusations came at a sensitive stage in U.S.-brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinians on an Israeli troop pullback from the West Bank town of Hebron, the last Palestinian city under Israeli control.
An all-night session ended Friday morning without agreement, but both sides said some progress had been made.
Israel has been on high alert for several days following warnings that the militant group Islamic Jihad planned a suicide attack to mark the first anniversary of the assassination of its leader, Fathi Shakaki.
Shakaki was gunned down in Malta on Oct. 26, 1995. Israel is widely believed to have had a hand in his assassination but never claimed responsibility for the killing.
The leader of Islamic Jihad vowed to avenge Shakaki's death at a rally held Friday in a Palestinian refugee camp south of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Ramadan Abdullah Shallah said Jihad planned to carry out attacks across Israel. He repeated opposition to peace accords between the Palestinians and Israel and declared that Jihad was "an enemy of this false peace which deprives our homeland from its right to independence."
Israel sealed the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday, barring 2 million Palestinians from entering Israel.
Security services suspect that a suicide bomber has succeeded in slipping through the roadblocks and is already inside Israel, Israeli radio stations reported. Earlier this year, Islamic militants carried out four suicide bombings that killed 63 people.