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CNN Live Sunday

Violence Flares Up in the Middle East

Aired August 05, 2001 - 16:15   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: In the Middle East, two people are dead and 17 injured in the latest violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Many of those wounded were in Tel Aviv, where just yesterday thousands of peace activists marched the streets demanding an end to the killings. Today, the Israeli prime minister brushed aside suggestions of international intervention.

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ARIEL SHARON, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: I would like to make it very clear, Israel will not accept any international intervention here, as it will not accept any international observers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KELLEY: CNN's Mike Hanna has more now on the rising tension in the region.

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MIKE HANNA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A Palestinian gunman opens fire near the defense force headquarters in downtown Tel Aviv. At least nine Israelis were wounded. The gunman himself was wounded by a traffic police officer after he tried to drive away in a car. The attack was the first inside Tel Aviv since the suicide bomb two months ago.

Conflict waged too in the center of Palestinian cities. On Saturday, Israeli missiles fired at vehicles parked outside the Ramallah offices of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. Israel security forces say that a target of attack was a man they described as a wanted militant, Abu Hallabe (ph), who was wounded in the missile strike.

Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi insists he was also a target of Israeli attack and has demanded the international community take the strongest action against what he calls "a state-sanctioned policy of assassination." While denying that any actions are planned against Palestinian political leaders, Israel;s foreign minister responds sharply to Barghouthi's call for international condemnation.

SHIMON PERES, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER: He wants to have a new freedom, a freedom to kill. He will have the freedom to kill, we shall not have the freedom to defend ourselves, to defer them, to prevent them? What sort of a business is that?

HANNA: The U.S. State Department has sharply criticized the Israeli attacks on individual Palestinians, but Palestinians insist it's up to the U.S. to persuade Israel to accept independent observers in the region as a means of implementing the cease-fire.

AHMAN QOREI: Why they don't send their observers? Why they don't start it immediately, the implementation of the cooling-off period? Why are we waiting? Why are we keeping the situation to be deteriorated day by day?

HANNA: Later Sunday, another Israeli attack. A 20-year-old Palestinian, identified as a member of Hamas, was killed when an Israeli helicopter fired at the car in which he was traveling near the West Bank town of Tulkarem.

(on camera): Israeli says there can be negotiation until the violence ends, Palestinians say the violence will not end unless there is negotiation -- incompatible positions that the two sides appear unable or unwilling to resolve by themselves.

Mike Hanna, CNN, Jerusalem.

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