Mona Ziade
Daily Star staff

US and European envoys are scrambling to restore credibility to Arab-Israeli peacemaking efforts as Washington’s hopes for a Middle East conference in June appear to be rapidly fading.
US President George W. Bush on Thursday upheld two principles for a lasting settlement ­ Israel’s security and a Palestinian state. He indicated deeper US involvement in the restructuring of Yasser Arafat’s beleaguered authority to provide the “underpinnings” of an independent state and secure a seat at the negotiating table when the hoped-for international conference eventually convenes, perhaps later in the summer.
But as international diplomacy picked up pace, Israel showed no sign of abandoning its military operations in Palestinian-ruled territories.
Israeli tanks and troops pulled out of Bethlehem after a four-day occupation of the biblical town, but raided two other cities. Palestinian witnesses said 15 people were wounded by Israeli gunfire, including an 11-year-old, in the Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt. The witnesses said youngsters had thrown pipe bombs at tanks near a border fence and troops had responded with gunfire.
The Israeli Army said an armored vehicle had overturned in an accident and rescue personnel sent to the scene came under attack and fired back.
Israeli troops and armored vehicles swept into the Palestinian part of the divided West Bank town of Hebron before dawn. The army said it  seized four wanted men, including one identified as an Islamic Jihad militant, before pulling out.
Witnesses said Israeli tanks also re-entered parts of northern Jenin and imposed a curfew as troops conducted house-to-house raids. Israeli military sources said troops were chasing a Palestinian who drove through a checkpoint. He was caught and later released, but armed men appeared and shooting erupted.
The military activities underlined the difficulties facing US and European troubleshooters fanning out in the region.
After meeting with his Cabinet in Washington, Bush said stability and new institutions are the goals of dual Middle East missions by CIA Director George Tenet  and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns. Burns is already in the region, and Tenet will join him this weekend.
“We are making progress on a strategy that would put the un
derpinnings of a Palestinian state in place,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “It’s going to take a while, we recognize that. But we’re going to continue to work the issue very hard.
“One of the things that worries us is spending … aid on an authority that might not keep good books, that the money might not actually go to help the Palestinian people, but might end up in somebody’s pocket,” Bush added. “That concerns us.”
Still, even with these moves, Secretary of State Colin Powell made plain that the direction of the peacemaking effort  was still under review.
“When Ambassador Burns and Director Tenet have finished their work and come back and presented their reports to the president, we’ll then be in a better position to see how we go forward,” Powell said.
An international peace conference this summer, Powell said, is still in the planning stages. Other senior officials were quoted by news agencies as saying that the Bush administration would not meet its June target date for a peace conference, now more likely to convene in August or September.
Burns, emerging from talks with Arafat in Ramallah, said that the international community, as well as Israel and the Palestinians, faced a tough task in restoring hope to the region.
“It is not possible to achieve lasting progress, real progress in security, without a sense of political hope, and it’s not possible to make political progress without security,” he said.  “I have seen for myself the humanitarian problems the Palestinians face on a daily basis and I firmly believe it is time to stop the suffering of both Palestinians and Israelis.
“It’s time to restore a sense of hope and I think that’s going to require some hard choices and hard work on the part of all of us,” Burns warned, adding that Washington was nevertheless determined to try and was acting with a “sense of urgency.”
After “a useful and very candid discussion” with Arafat he reiterated the need for a three-pronged approach to renew the political dialogue aimed at creating two states, building strong Palestinian institutions to run a state and bolster security structures to prevent terror attacks.
Burns arrived in Ramallah from Cairo, where he held talks with President Hosni Mubarak and warned that the Palestinians’ conditions were worsening.
“The humanitarian problem, the daily humiliations that ordinary Palestinians suffer under occupation are getting worse every day,” he said in the Egyptian capital. “It’s time for all of us to try very hard to restore a sense of hope. There has been too much suffering and too much death for both Israelis and Palestinians.”
Separately, Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, arrived in Beirut from Cairo, where he was told a peace conference could be convened only after Israel withdraws from territories it has gradually reoccupied over the past 20 months of unrest.
“The Arab conditions must be filled before the holding of such a conference, notably an Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied after Sept. 28, 2000, and the lifting of the blockade imposed on the Palestinian people,” Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said after meeting Solana.
In Beirut, the EU official said he was carrying “ideas” to the Palestinians and Israelis to defuse tensions and that he hoped they would accept them.
Solana said he would discuss the peace conference proposal. He said a “political impetus,” and not the conference itself, is  ultimate goal of the new diplomatic campaign, which, he said, was being coordinated by the US, the EU, Russia and the United Nations. Solana also described as an “important element” the Arab Peace Initiative, which was endorsed in March, offering Israel normal relations in return for an to occupation.
In Israel, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
“There were signals that Prime Minister Sharon has strong sympathy for a conference,” Fischer told reporters afterward. “There seems to be an opportunity (now) to explore in a more comprehensive way whether the political process can be started again. It depends on the security situation.”
He later met with Arafat, who assured him that the Palestinian reform process would not be derailed. ­ With agencies

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