Peres to talk to Palestinians

Police wrestle with a protester outside Jerusalem's Orient House

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has been authorised to make contact with Palestinian representatives, but only to discuss a ceasefire and not for political negotiations.

[The Palestinians are] trying to achieve something that they weren't able to achieve around the negotiating table

Israeli spokesman Raanan Gissin

Senior political sources in the Israeli Government confirmed the latest effort to end 10 months of violence, but stressed that it did not breach Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's oft-repeated policy of not negotiating "under fire".

Israel remains on a high state of alert following last week's bloody suicide bombing in Jerusalem, and another attack on Sunday which killed the bomber and injured 15 people.

Palestinians meanwhile have launched a general strike to protest Israel's seizure of Orient House, their political headquarters in mainly Arab east Jerusalem.

Shops shuttered in protest

Scuffles also broke out during the day between Palestinians demonstrating outside the building and Israeli police, who confiscated banners and arrested several of their owners.

BBC correspondent Paul Wood says many Palestinians view Israeli attempts to re-open talks without a political content as an effort to get them to call off their uprising unconditionally.

Israeli troops occupied Orient House in the aftermath of Thursday's bombing by Islamic militant group Hamas at a popular restaurant in west Jerusalem, which killed 15 people.

Shops, businesses and restaurants across the West Bank and in major Palestinian cities were closed in the first general strike since the uprising, or intifada, began last September.

[Suicide bombings] force Ariel Sharon to accept Foreign Minister Shimon Peres negotiating with the Palestinians

Hamas political leader

Palestinian refugees in south Lebanon and Damascus also shut shop to protest the seizure of the highly symbolic headquarters.

At a refugee camp near the Lebanese city of Sidon, about 2,000 Palestinians chanted anti-Israel slogans and burned an effigy of Mr Sharon.

'Arafat's responsibility'

Israel said it held Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat personally responsible for Sunday's attack in a Russian cafe near the northern town of Haifa.

Witnesses said a man got out of a taxi, walked to the restaurant terrace and detonated the explosives he was carrying in a bag.

The militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said it carried out the attack, but a spokesman for Mr Sharon said the Palestinian Authority had not done enough to rein in the terrorists.

Protests erupted at Orient House again on Sunday

"There's no doubt part of this campaign [is] trying to break the citizens of Israel, trying to achieve something that they [the Palestinians] weren't able to achieve around the negotiating table," spokesman Raanan Gissin said.

The political chief of Hamas said that suicide bombs were the only way to bargain with Israel.

Such attacks "force Ariel Sharon to accept Foreign Minister Shimon Peres negotiating with the Palestinians," said Khaled Meshaal.

Occupation

Israeli troops occupied Orient House early on Friday morning, as well as occupying other offices in the suburb of Abu Dis and launching air strikes on Palestinian police headquarters in Ramallah.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has demanded an immediate ceasefire and called for an end to the occupation of Orient House.

Doves and hawks do not see eye-to-eye over the next step

But Israel has declared that the building will never be handed back.

Doves in the Israeli cabinet, led by Mr Peres, believe that the hawks, led by Mr Sharon, may have committed a blunder by seizing the building.

Our correspondent says the doves fear it may bring the Palestinian uprising into the heart of Jerusalem and lead to television pictures of Israeli police spilling Palestinian blood on the streets of the city.

The temperature remained high on the Arab side as a seven-year-old girl was buried in Hebron after being shot in the head by Israeli troops during violent clashes on Sunday.

She is being laid to rest beside her grandmother who suffered a heart attack after the girl's death.