Israeli, Palestinian Negotiators Fail To Seal Deal Both Sides Make Intense Efforts To Reach New Year’s Deadline

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators failed to seal an agreement on Hebron in another round of intensive bargaining Sunday, leaving only two days to resolve the issue before a self-imposed target date of New Year’s Day.

The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, traveled to Cairo on Sunday to brief Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, then met with Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai in the Gaza Strip late Sunday night in an attempt to resolve final differences.

But after an hour and a half, Arafat and Mordechai parted without a deal. Negotiations were to resume today, when Dennis Ross, the U.S. special envoy for the Middle East, was expected to return to Israel.

It was Ross’ arrival in Israel on Dec. 21 that spurred the latest flurry of talks and the sense that a deal on Hebron was finally at hand.

Although an agreement has been pushed back day after day since, the sense that a solution to Hebron is finally at hand has not waned. The Israelis and Palestinians have been locked in what to all appearances is a genuine effort to finally crack the complex issue.

Under the Israeli-Palestinian accords, Israel was to have pulled out from most of Hebron by last March, retaining a security force around several enclaves of Jewish settlers who believe that they are staking a biblical claim to Hebron through their presence there.

But the pullout was put off after a series of terror attacks in Israel last spring, and on taking office in June, the new conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reopened negotiations in an attempt to stiffen the security arrangements.

Arafat has pressed demands of his own, including a detailed schedule for the fulfillment of other Israeli commitments like the release of Palestinian prisoners and a transit road between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

One major issue before Mordechai and Arafat on Sunday night was the Palestinian demand for joint Palestinian-Israeli security arrangements around the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site sacred to Jews and Muslims and the primary focus of the dispute over Hebron.

At present, Israeli forces alone police a strictly segregated schedule of worship for Jews and Muslims, and Israel wants to maintain it.