Israelis impatient for new ideas

MacVicar

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Violence continued Tuesday in the Middle East, with Israeli civilians being attacked and Israeli helicopter gunships responding with strikes on targets in the Palestinian territories. In Washington, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with President Bush to discuss ways to bring peace to the troubled region.

CNN's Sheila MacVicar is in Jerusalem and has been following the Mideast crisis. She spoke Tuesday night with CNN's Aaron Brown.

BROWN: At the White House today, President Bush met with the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, trying to put some pressure on the Israelis. But the fact is, that the pressure, and we can argue about whether it's been enough pressure or whether the right people are applying it, but the pressure has not worked, and the words coming out of both sides today are harsher than ever, and the actions, it being the Middle East, follow in kind.

More words, more deeds today, and in the Middle East, of course, that means more dying. So once again, we turn to CNN's Sheila MacVicar, who is in Jerusalem where it is morning. Good morning to you, Sheila.

MACVICAR: Good morning, Aaron. You're right, more words and more deeds overnight. Overnight we've had a series of Israeli attacks in retaliation for things that we've seen take place in the previous number of hours. We've had Israeli troops go back into southern Gaza. We've had what the Israelis euphemistically call a target of assassination, the murder of three key members of Palestinian security force in Ramallah, and that will signal a redline to the Palestinians.

In the past, when those kinds of assassinations have been carried out, there has always been a harsh response from the Palestinians. Equally, for the Israelis last night, a Palestinian missile fired into the backyard of an Israeli neighborhood, wounding two. But again, the firing of the missile a redline for the Israelis.

I wanted to turn the talk away from the streets for a moment and onto the political. Take a look at this headline this morning in the Jerusalem Post. This is Wednesday morning's headline. This is a paper that is largely very supportive of Mr. Sharon's government, certainly has been in the past, asking this morning, Aaron, "How long must we suffer?" People beginning to wonder just what is Mr. Sharon's plan to get out of this mess.

They know from yesterday's security Cabinet meeting, a meeting that is now described to the Israeli press as having been very bitter indeed, that basically there are no new ideas here and that the only idea seems to be an increase in intensification of military pressure on Mr. Arafat. Aaron.

BROWN: Well, you have a Mubarak proposal for a summit. You have a Saudi proposal that still needs to be filled in. On both sides of the line in the Israeli press, the Palestinian press, how are those proposals being played?

MACVICAR: The Mubarak proposal was for a summit between Prime Minister Sharon and Mr. Arafat under his good graces, if you will, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, and that seems to be dead in the water before the ink was even dry on the invitations frankly.

Mr. Sharon has said, you know, he is welcome -- he is willing to meet with President Mubarak anytime, anyplace. He'll get together with him and talk; however, he is refusing to sit down in a room with Mr. Arafat.

And not only that, Mr. Sharon says, "well, Mr. Arafat is going to be very busy in Ramallah" and has made it very clear that he would not give permission for Mr. Arafat to go to such a meeting. So certainly, the time is not right, and clearly the dynamics between those two men are not right to have them in the same room.

The Saudi proposal is a different matter. There are a lot of obstacles before we can even get to the point of saying that, yes this really does have legs, and the first point is, Aaron, that the Arab states will have to agree that they will sign on to that Saudi peace plan -- Aaron.

BROWN: Sheila, thank you. Sheila MacVicar in Jerusalem for us this evening, thank you.