ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 24, 1997 TAG: 9703240153
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: JERUSALEM
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
A top Arafat adviser said the peace process was going nowhere anyway, regardless of the Israeli security Cabinet's action.
The Israeli government Sunday effectively suspended the peace process until Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat demonstrates that he will fight Islamic militant groups bent on attacking Israel.
In a carefully worded statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security Cabinet stopped short of declaring the process frozen, but said the Palestinian Authority ``must ... fight terrorism and violence as a necessary stage in advancing the political process.''
Meanwhile, in an alarming charge, two top Israeli security officials said that Palestinian police had stopped helping them foil ``terrorist actions.''
``Today and for several days, the security mechanisms of the Palestinians have not cooperated with the General Security Services - the Shin Bet,'' said Major Gen. Moseh Yaalon, head of Israel's military intelligence. ``In practice, they have conditioned that on a change in the political situation.''
The Israeli security Cabinet called on Arafat to take decisive action on several fronts, including strengthening cooperation in security matters, preventing incitement against Israel, destroying the infrastructure of terror groups and seizing illegal weapons.
Government spokesman Moshe Fogel said Netanyahu resisted a push by hard-liners who wanted him to declare the Oslo peace process dead. ``Netanyahu is giving the process a chance,'' Fogel said.
But Fogel said the coming days will be dangerous: ``This is going to go to the brink, and you don't always know when you go to the brink if somebody will inadvertently fall off the side.''
Arafat, in Pakistan at an Islamic conference, did not issue an immediate response. A top adviser, Ahmed Tibi, said the peace process was going nowhere anyway, regardless of the security Cabinet's action.
``If the talks have been suspended - so far the Palestinian Authority has received no official notification - this does not change the situation much from what it has been over the past couple of months,'' Tibi said.
Israel's demands came two days after a Palestinian killed himself and three women in a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv cafe, the first such attack in a little over a year.
The explosion was widely forewarned. The relationship between the Israelis and Palestinians had reached this breaking point because of a long line of disputes and a recent dramatic stand by Netanyahu that Jerusalem - all of it - was Israel's undivided capital.
Bulldozers last week began clearing land for a Jewish neighborhood on a hilltop of pine trees that the Palestinians had hoped would be part of their capital.
On Sunday, clashes broke out for a third consecutive day in Hebron, but Palestinian police formed a human chain to prevent rioters from getting close to city's 450 Jewish settlers.
Police set up roadblocks at the entrances to Tel Aviv and other coastal cities. For a third day, the 2 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were barred from entering Israel.
In about the only hopeful sign of the day, dozens of people gathered at Apropo Cafe in Tel Aviv - the site of the bombing - in their Purim costumes, a gesture, many said, that life goes on.
But at the Organization of Islamic Conference, Arafat accused Israel on Sunday of acting to destroy the peace process. He condemned Israel for its construction plans in East Jerusalem, which ``have led us almost to a dead end that threatens the whole process.''
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. A Palestinian youth shouts whileby CNBholding a rock in Hebron on Sunday during the third straight day of
clashes with Israeli troops. color.