TEHRAN The environment ministers from Arab nations called here Wednesday for the closure of Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona, charging it posed an environmental threat.
The ministers considered it dangerous because it was built from "outdated technology" and functioned "outside of international inspection," Yussef abu Safiya, the Palestinian minister for the environment, told reporters.
The ministers were debating a request made by the Palestinian delegation here.
The nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert town of Dimona is capable of producing the plutonium needed for atomic bombs and foreign experts suspect up to 200 nuclear warheads are stored at the plant.
But Israel, which has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never admitted having a nuclear arsenal nor opened the Dimona plant to international inspectors.
The environment ministers meanwhile accused Israel of abusing the region's water supplies.
They discussed the "theft of water (from the Palestinian territories), poisoning well water, and the seepage of used water from Zionist settlements into Palestinian farmland," Abu Safiya said.
In Lebanon, some 300 Palestinians, none more than 10 years old, demonstrated Wednesday in front of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) offices to denounce Israel's "crimes" against children.
The young protesters, organized by the hardline democratic front for the liberation of Palestine, held a three-hour sit-in in front of the office and handed the ICRC a statement denouncing "Israeli crimes against childhood. And the complicity of the United States." The statement called on the Red Cross "to protect Palestinian childhood" and to make Israel comply with the Geneva convention agreement on the rules of war.
The children, who came from Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon, wore black headbands reading "End Israel's Crimes," "Don't Kill Children," "Where Is Humanity's Conscience?" and "We Are All Mohammed al-Durra" Durra, 12, was shot dead in his father's arms in a September 30 clash in Gaza City. The shooting by the Israelis, was filmed and broadcast repeatedly throughout the world.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat called on Wednesday for a more active European role in a battered Middle East peace process that has been dominated by the United States.
"In this particular time we are looking forward to a German and European position to push the peace process forward and to preserve it," Arafat told reporters after meeting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at his Gaza office.
"We are very much in need of this European and German initiative at this particular time," Arafat said.
At least 156 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in close to five weeks of violence sweeping the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Palestinians accuse the United States, the main mediator in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, of not being an honest broker. But Washington says it alone can mediate because no other power enjoys the full confidence of Israel.
After July's Camp David peace summit ended in failure, U.S. President Bill Clinton praised Israel for its negotiating stance, but said Arafat did not go far enough for peace.
Before meeting Barak in Bait-ul-Moqaddas on Tuesday, Schroeder told reporters that he intended to urge Israeli and Palestinian leaders to uphold a U.S.-brokered understanding to end the violence.
Arafat said after the meeting that the Palestinian people, fighting for independence, are in a state of legitimate defense against Israeli "aggression and blockade." "The Palestinian people are in a state of legitimate defense faced with the continuation of the Israeli aggression. The blockade and encirclement must end in order to achieve security and stability in the region," the Palestinian news agency Wafa quoted a statement as saying.
The Israeli Army sealed off the Palestinian territories on October 5, a week after the start of the Intifada in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel itself which has claimed at least 160 lives, almost all Palestinians, with more than 4,000 wounded.
"It is clear that the goal of our people is to achieve independence, freedom and the proclamation of a Palestinian state with Al-Qods as its capital," the statement said.
The Palestinian Islamic group Hamas said on Wednesday it opposed any moves by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to return to the negotiating table with Israel.
"The majority of Palestinian people, including Hamas, does not accept a return to the negotiating table, ignoring the sacrifice by 150 martyrs and 6,000 wounded," Hamas spokesman Ibrahim Ghosheh told Reuters in Doha.
The Zionist Army lifted Wednesday a month-long closure on the Arab section of the southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil, but imposed a 24-hour curfew on an Arab village in the north, AFP correspondents said.
A Palestinian security official said the lifting of the curfew on the divided city allowed Palestinian residents to leave their homes. Over the past 32 days, they have only been allowed by the Israeli Army to move freely in the city for several hours every few days.
But in the northern West Bank, the Israeli Army shut an Arab village near the town of Jenin, residents said.
Israeli soldiers set up a command post in the school in the village of Selit Azaher and arrested some 11 people in the town of 7,000 people, they said.
They said the army arrested relatives of those wanted by Israel in connection with the wave of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in which more than 160 people have been killed over the last five weeks.
Israel also closed schools in a divided West Bank village near Bethlehem, apparently in an effort to curb children from throwing stones at Jewish settlers, Palestinian officials said Wednesday.
The Israeli Army announced last week that it would from now on take the "initiative" in clashes with the Palestinians.
Israel extended Wednesday what was promised to be a one-day closure of the Palestinian International Airport in the Gaza Strip, an airport official told AFP.
The airport at Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip was closed on Monday night for the third time in a month and the army had said in a statement that it would be allowed to reopen on Tuesday.
But Israel then told airport officials in writing that it could only open on Wednesday morning.
"The closure of the airport is still on. The Israelis called me late last night, after midnight and informed the closure is to continue Wednesday until Thursday," said Airport General Director Suliman abu Halib.
Halib said Israeli officials gave no reason for the extension and he doubted that Israel would allow the airport to open on Thursday.
"I cannot give trust to the Israeli side or to their commitments," he said.
It is the third time Israel has closed the airport, a symbol of Palestinian self-rule, following the eruption of violence that has left some 160 people dead, nearly all Arabs.
In the meantime, in Beirut, an Islamist group, the forces of the martyr Omar al-Mukhtar, claimed responsibility Wednesday for a new attack on Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip.
A roadside bomb exploded late Tuesday near the Zionist settlement of Netzarim, but caused no injuries, an Israeli witness told AFP.
The explosive went off as a convoy of settlers escorted by troops passed by on the way from Netzarim to the Karni crossing point between Gaza and Israel.
The Al-Mukhtar Group, in a statement sent to AFP, said several Israeli soldiers were hit by the explosion and subsequent automatic weapon fire from its fighters.
It was the 13th communique since the violence in the Palestinian territories erupted on September 28 to be signed by the forces of the martyr Omar al-Mukhtar, claiming a number of attacks in the Palestinian territories.
Named after a Libyan nationalist who fought the Italian colonial authorities, the group, or its namesake, resurfaced after a two year silence.
Meanwhile, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has pointed a finger of blame at Israel's intelligence service Mossad for the October 12 bombing of the USS Cole that cost the lives of 17 American sailors.
"If I refer to Mossad, and it is probable that it is (involved), that's because Islamic movements such as Islamic jihad ... were infiltrated by Israel during their stay in Afghanistan" in the 1980s, Saleh said late Tuesday.
The Yemeni leader, at a meeting in the southern Province of Hadramaut, explained that the authorities were still unclear as to who was behind the deadly suicide bombing in the Port of Aden.
"Was it a state, the Israeli Mossad, or jihad Islamists or others?" he asked.
"We are trying to make sure of the nationalities of those (two bombers) who were killed in the explosion, because all our information on the subject was provided by witnesses," said Saleh.