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Violence shadows summit
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A CAR bomb exploded near a supermarket during the morning rush hour in a retail and industrial area of Jerusalem yesterday as Palestinians prepared for a "day of rage" to mark the opening of the Arab summit.
Tensions were also high in the flashpoint West Bank town of Hebron, with radical Jewish settlers demanding that the army retaliate for the killing the day before of a 10-month-old baby girl by a Palestinian sniper.
The bomb exploded as a public bus was passing a bus stop in the Talpiot industrial area in southwest Jerusalem, lightly injuring a passer-by, one bus passenger and a motorist, and several suspects had been arrested, Jerusalem police chief Miki Levy said.
In Hebron, the Israeli army overnight ordered the evacuation of the Abu Sneinah Arab district overlooking the Jewish area of the city, ahead of a possible military response to the baby's murder.
The Jerusalem explosion occurred as Palestinians were preparing marches to urge a continuation of the intifada and protest at the continued closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as Arab leaders hold their first ordinary summit in 10 years in Amman.
The two-day summit is aimed at healing old wounds between Iraq and Kuwait and lend a crutch to the Palestinians, crippled by the six months of violence and a punishing Israeli economic blockade.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak justified the Palestinian uprising saying "violence is the result of the continuous occupation" by Israel of Arab territory and "the denial of rights".
Mubarak said he hoped that "strong Arab positions will be adopted concerning the decisive issues facing our region, namely the Palestinian cause".
"We should also renew our attachment to achieving a just peace on all the tracks, because peace is the only way to secure security and stability," he said.
But the meeting has already been overshadowed by Baghdad's refusal to accept anything less than a unilateral Arab lifting of international sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
And at the United Nations, the Security Council's deadline for finding consensus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict passed with members still locked in informal talks late on Monday.
The council had given itself until the end of the day to see if it could find a common position on a draft resolution before the start of the Arab summit.
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