East Jerusalem

"Jericho: Dreams, Ruins, Phantoms," by Robert Ruby. 340 pages. New York: Henry Holt and Company. $25 Anyone interested in the history of Palestine/Israel will find this book gripping. It has the tone of a mystery story, making frequent reference to a mound of earth in Jericho, which hides the origins of that ancient city. However, if you await a dramatic denouement to the story, you will be disappointed.The author was The Baltimore Sun's bureau chief in Jerusalem, l987-1992. His residence in Jericho made him choose that town as his subject.

JERUSALEM -- Meeting for the second time this month as part of a new U.S.-influenced peace effort, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators bogged down again yesterday over familiar issues: proposed Israeli construction in areas that the Palestinians claim for a future state and Israel's demand that the Palestinians crack down on armed groups. The two sides have made no apparent progress since President Bush convened the peace conference last month in an effort to revive serious peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

JERUSALEM -- As Palestinians and Israeli troops clashed for an eighth day yesterday in the West Bank, President Clinton's Middle East envoy met with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in hopes of nudging the two into peace talks.Publicly, the Americans said one of envoy Dennis Ross' missions was to pressure Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to work firmly in cooperation with Israeli security against terror groups.But privately, according to knowledgeable diplomats, Ross was also said to have in hand a strong message from Clinton to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, requesting that Netanyahu show more flexibility in dealings with Arafat.

JERUSALEM -- By the time Palestinian leaders emerged yesterday from a meeting with Secretary of State James A. Baker III, they found many of their hard-won political gains from the Palestinian uprising long gone.Gone were the last hopes that the United States would soon resume official contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a dialogue the Palestinians said Mr. Baker firmly rejected.Gone too was any assurance that the Palestinian problem would be considered the No. 1 regional issue.

JERUSALEM - Three months of bloodshed and the loss of more than 300 lives have brought Palestinians closer to their goal of controlling East Jerusalem and its Muslim shrines, and acquiring a state in almost all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat can now pocket these gains in the remaining weeks before President Clinton leaves the White House on Jan. 20 and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak faces elections Feb. 6. Or he can wait, in hopes that time and continued conflict will eventually win the final Palestinian claim - a right of return for several million Palestinian refugees or their descendants to their original homes in Israel.

JERUSALEM -- Israel and the Palestinian authority took a step yesterday toward reviving the moribund Middle East peace talks, although neither side offered any concessions on the critical issues that have deadlocked the process for months.Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy and Nabil Sha'ath, the Palestinian minister of planning and international cooperation, jointly announced a resumption of talks between committees discussing several secondary issues in the peace process. But Sha'ath emphasized that the critical issues that led to a deadlock -- the future of Jerusalem, construction of Israeli settlements and final status talks -- "still await solution."

JERICHO, West Bank - Marking renewed American involvement in the stalled Middle East peace process, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met yesterday with Israeli and Palestinian officials to discuss elections scheduled for Jan. 9 to choose Yasser Arafat's successor. Israel confirmed that it would ease travel restrictions on Palestinians, while Palestinian officials pledged that they would work to end violence and that their vows of political reform were genuine. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon went further last night by agreeing to high-level talks with the Palestinians to discuss the elections, including the issue of whether to allow Palestinians living in East Jerusalem the right to vote for president of the Palestinian Authority.

JERUSALEM - Set against a backdrop of unabated bloodshed, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak won assurance yesterday that his tottering government would survive for another month, allowing him to take a new crack at negotiating with the Palestinians after next week's U.S. elections. The commitment from the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party not to vote to bring down the government means that Barak won't have to join forces right away with right-wing, Likud opposition leader Ariel Sharon, whose presence in the government would be widely seen as killing chances for peace.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli authorities bulldozed 14 illegal Arab homes yesterday in one of their largest demolitions in Jerusalem in years, sparking angry rock-throwing clashes with police while exposing an undercurrent of tension among Palestinians over who may build where. The demolitions, at a refugee camp on the northern edge of the city, broke what had been an atmosphere of relative calm in recent weeks in Jerusalem, which has seen little of the shooting and bombing that has racked the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

JERUSALEM - Sari Nusseibeh returned to the New Imperial Hotel yesterday. This time, he wasn't stopped by Israeli police. Earlier this month, authorities detained Nusseibeh, the chief PLO representative in East Jerusalem, for planning a holiday tea reception at the hotel, calling the event a challenge to Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem. Yesterday, Nusseibeh led a political rally there complete with the Palestinian flag, under the auspices not of the PLO but of a new group, the Israeli-Palestinian Coalition for Peace.