The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, is to travel to the Gaza Strip and West Bank on Wednesday to assess weeks of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The former president of Ireland hopes to meet both the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during her week-long mission. Mr Robinson's trip follows a resolution adopted last month by the UN Commission on Human Rights which condemned Israel for committing alleged "war crimes" against Palestinians and called for setting up a commission of inquiry. Israel has vowed not to co-operate with a UN inquiry.
Meanwhile, four Palestinians have been shot and wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers guarding two Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. The violence erupted as thousands of people attended a funeral of a man killed yesterday. The four were shot with live rounds in confrontations between stone-throwing demonstrators and Israeli troops near the Netzarim and Kfar Darom Jewish settlements.
However, the intensity of the fighting has reportedly dropped since a fragile truce accord was agreed between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, last week. Both Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, head to the United States for talks with President Bill Clinton this week after the US presidential elections. The talks follow two previous failed attempts by the United States to bring a halt to the unrest.
Close to 180 people have been killed since the violence erupted on 28 September, following a provocative visit by Israeli hardline opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, to a Jerusalem holy place that is at the heart of the conflict. The vast majority of those killed were Palestinians. The White House announced that Mr Clinton, who is striving to achieve peace before his term of office ends in January, would meet Arafat on Thursday and Barak on Sunday for separate talks. A White House spokeswoman said that the aim would be to extinguish the violence and revive the moribund peace process, but added that Mr Clinton did not believe that a three-way meeting would be "productive" at this stage.
Yasser Arafat said in a US television interview that he wants an international peacekeeping force in the West Bank and Gaza to protect Palestinians from the Israeli army. "I'm begging to help me to stop this tragedy," Mr Arafat said. "I'm asking the American people, I'm asking the whole international community to save the peace process." Last Wednesday, the Palestinian observer at the United Nations suggested deployment of 2,000 UN military observers to protect Palestinian civilians from Israeli forces. However, Israel's Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, reiterated Israel's rejection of such a proposal.
Both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders need to walk a political tightrope in their efforts to revive the peace process without losing the support of the radical tendencies in both camps. Ehud Barak faces a new test in parliament today, with the 120-member assembly due to vote on five motions of no confidence in his crippled minority government. Parliamentary spokesman Giora Pordes said that Israeli-Arab political parties had lodged four censure motions to protest at the deaths of Israeli Arabs early last month during demonstrations in support of the Palestinian "intifada" or uprising.
Another no-confidence motion has been lodged by the staunchly secular Shinui party over Mr Barak's decision to shelve plans for a so-called "secular revolution" in return for the support of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish party, Shas. His government has just 30 seats in parliament, but without Shas and its key 17-vote bloc, his opponents are unlikely to muster the necessary support for any moves to topple the government. After failing in his efforts to forge a national emergency government with the hardline right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon, Mr Barak won a temporary lifeline from Shas last week. The party had left the coalition only three months earlier.
