U.S. envoy Dennis Ross shuttled between Jerusalem and the Palestinians' Gaza Strip headquarters Sunday, trying to finesse a deal to start an overdue Israeli withdrawal from Hebron.
With warnings of violence multiplying from Jewish settlers in the West Bank town and from Islamic militants, both sides were anxious to reach agreement soon.Ross and the Israelis reported progress; the Palestinians said substantive differences remain.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met with Ross on Sunday night, and both Palestinian sources and Shai Bazak, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said after the meeting that agreement did not appear imminent.
Ross made no comment after the meeting. But he suggested earlier that a new deal on the months-overdue pullback agreed to by Israel's previous government could be delayed if Arafat goes ahead with plans to leave Monday on a weeklong trip to Europe.
Netanyahu has promised to honor the earlier agreement but wants more security for the 450 Jewish settlers in Hebron. The Palestinians have said his demands would require unacceptable changes to the agreement.
Netanyahu also met Sunday with Jewish settlers from Hebron in an effort to blunt their anger over the emerging deal, which would replace most Israeli troops in the city with armed Palestinian police. Hebron, the last West Bank city under Israeli control, is home to 94,000 Palestinians.
Two settlers in the tense city who said they thought they were being attacked with rocks and bottles fired a burst of pistol shots into a Palestinian building on Sunday. Bullets shattered the window of a dentist's office - one whizzed past the dentist's head and lodged in the wall.
Israeli police arrested the settlers.
Baruch Marzel, a settler leader in Hebron, said that when the redeployment takes place: "There will be no way to prevent bloodshed."
"It is just a matter of time," he told The Associated Press. "We are preparing for our defense."
Marzel also suggested what many fear - that settlers might try to sabotage the pullout. "There are 1,000 ways for us to explode the agreement," he said.
Unrelated threats by leaders of the militant group Islamic Jihad have only added to the volatile atmosphere. The group has warned it will carry out attacks to avenge the assassination a year ago of their leader, Fathi Shikaki. Israel is widely believed to have killed Shikaki.