Palestinians suggest conditional truce

Press, 30 December 1988, Page 8

Palestinians suggest conditional truce

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem Palestinians have floated the idea of calling a conditional truce in their year-long uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead two stone-throwing Palestinian protesters during a general strike called by underground leaders of the uprising yesterday.

Palestinian and Israeli sources said West Bank Palestinian leaders raised the idea of a truce in talks with foreign diplomats and in indirect contacts with the Israeli Defence Ministry’s Civil Administration, which runs public services in the occupied zone.

The sources said that the leaders of the uprising

would consider suspending their revolt if Israel released some 1500 activists imprisoned without trial and allowed free municipal elections in the territories.

“They have been putting out feelers on the conditions for calling some sort of a truce. It’s very fragile and tentative,” a Palestinian source familiar with the contacts said.

A Left-wing Parliamentarian, Yair Tsaban, of the Mapam Party, told Reuters that he had met a jailed Palestinian leader, Faisal Husseini, in an Israeli prison and had discussed elections and a truce.

Mr Tsaban quoted Husseini as saying, “We are eager to get out of this vicious circle of violence

on both sides, but violence cannot be stopped by one side. “If the Israeli Government will create the conditions which will enable the Palestinians in the occupied territories to go on with their national struggle with non-violent means, it will help.”

The sources said Palestinian demands for a truce included releasing prisoners, closing detention camps, cancelling deportations, withdrawing, Israeli troops from centres of population in the territories, reopening of Palestinian universities and municipal elections.

Mr Tsaban said Husseini supported territorywide elections to elect Palestinian representatives who could talk with Israeli authorities.

Palestinians said representatives elected in municipal or territorywide polls would almost certainly be sympathisers of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which Israel regards as a terrorist organisation. They said Israel had not yet made any response to the idea of a truce. The deaths of the two protesters on the West Bank brought the total of Palestinians killed during the uprising to at least 348. Some 14 Israelis havve also died during the year-long revolt.

Several other Palestinians were wounded by Army gunfire in the occupied territories. Three Israelis were wounded by stones thrown at a bus and a train.