JERUSALEM — Long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian truce talks sought by Washington were on hold again Monday, possibly until next week, after Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli woman in a West Bank road ambush.
Also Monday, Israel set up a large military buffer zone in the West Bank that is off-limits to Palestinians except those who live in it. Israel said the zone is meant to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants. Palestinians said Israel was violating earlier peace accords, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said the zone marked a "very dangerous escalation."
The United States wants Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to meet as soon as possible to work out a formal cease-fire. A fresh outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence would hamper Washington's efforts to bring Arab and Muslim states into an international alliance against Islamic militants.
However, the meeting, which Peres and Arafat have been trying to arrange for the past month, has been postponed repeatedly.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unexpectedly vetoed talks set for later in the day, saying the Palestinians had not met his condition of restoring calm for at least 48 hours before a meeting. On Monday, the fatal shooting in the West Bank reset the clock again, said Sharon's adviser, Raanan Gissin.
"This is not a cease-fire," Sharon told visiting French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine on Monday, according to a statement from Sharon's office.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has been in touch with both sides by telephone repeatedly in recent days to help arrange the talks.
Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia said he believed a meeting would only be possible now sometime next week.
Qureia said Israel offered to reschedule the meeting for Tuesday, but that Arafat declined because he plans to fly to Damascus for talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Israelis cannot meet later in the week because of the Yom Kippur holiday, which runs from sundown Wednesday to sundown Thursday.
Peres and Arafat would be heading into their long-anticipated meeting with most details already worked out in preparatory talks, said Qureia, who participated in those sessions.
The two sides agreed that at the end of their meeting, Peres and Arafat would jointly renew their commitment to the terms of a cease-fire brokered earlier by the CIA and to recommendations by the international Mitchell Commission for a resumption of peace talks.
In Gaza City, Arafat said Monday that despite the latest delay, he would stick to the informal truce he declared last week. "We are fully committed to all the peace steps we have announced," Arafat said.
The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for Monday's killing of a 28-year-old Israeli woman in the West Bank's Jordan Valley. It was the second deadly roadside ambush since Arafat's truce announcement. On the Palestinian side, one man was killed by Israeli fire during that period.
Arafat has told Palestinian security commanders that they must prevent attacks on Israelis, and held meetings with heads of various factions, including the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, in recent days.
In a letter to gunmen in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement, Arafat demanded complete calm. He said he also obtained agreement from Islamic militants that there would be no suicide bombings, said a leading figure of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the West Bank, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Islamic groups say publicly that they will continue to fight the Israelis. However, Hamas officials have said privately that bombings might be put on hold to avoid an international backlash against the Palestinians in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
In Israel, the argument over the truce talks deepened the rift in Sharon's center-right coalition. Peres' moderate Labor Party said the Peres-Arafat meeting must take place as soon as possible, and Peres stayed away from Sunday's Cabinet meeting when it became clear Sharon was blocking the truce talks.
"Our position is that this meeting has to bring about a cease-fire. It does not have to be the result of a cease-fire," Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh of Labor told Israel radio.