Barak Wins Political Reprieve Amid Israeli Helicopter Attacks on West Bank, Gaza
BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: Israeli helicopters staged intense assaults in the West Bank and Gaza, Monday, firing on offices of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah Party. The attacks came just hours after one Israeli was shot dead in Jerusalem and the body of another was found on the city's outskirts. With no end in sight to the violence, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak defended his conduct before a hostile audience in the Knesset. CNN's Jerrold Kessel reports from Jerusalem.</s>JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ehud Barak blamed the Palestinians for backing away from the peace option, but he says, he is not closing the door to talks that could end the violence.</s>EHUD BARAK, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: It cannot come together. This brutal violence that is going on together with negotiations. We hope the Palestinians will be sincere enough to put an end to violence and go back to the negotiating table bearing in mind the experiences of the last few weeks.</s>KESSEL: Mr. Barak won a political reprieve when a key religious party pledged to oppose attempts to topple him for now. That's put on hold moves to bring Ariel Sharon and his right wing Likud into an emergency alliance.</s>EPHRAIM SNEH, ISRAELI DEP. DEFENSE MINISTER: To stand in this armed conflict which we now have, we don't need him. In order to reach peace, he may be quite counterproductive.</s>KESSEL: For now, the violence holds sway. Sporadic, though less widespread, clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops, and Palestinian anger running deep, more funerals for people killed in the previous days' clashes. Two Israelis killed in and around Jerusalem by Palestinian assailants, Israeli police say. A guard shot at close range outside a social security office in East Jerusalem, his colleague critically wounded and another man stabbed to death, found with hands bound in a field to the south of the city. Mr. Barak vowed to the Knesset that those attacks would not go unanswered. An angry Palestinian response:</s>SAEB ERAKAT, CHIEF PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR: It is a very unfortunate speech. It is addressed towards the Israeli right wing. It has a lot of language of strength, political blindness and arrogance of power. I had hoped, as a Palestinian who had negotiated with Mr. Barak, that he would take the high ground, that he would take the courageous road and the farsightedness and address the Palestinians about ending the Israeli occupation, ending the Palestinian suffering and having the Palestinians live as equal partners within their own state next to the state of Israel.</s>KESSEL: Mr. Barak is now intimating that his declared need for a timeout in the peacemaking is over. But until his anticipated meeting with President Clinton in Washington within the next two weeks, he's stopping short of declaring that the negotiating approach with the Palestinians is the only real option. Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Jerusalem.