OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 2 January — The Israeli Army launched a sweeping arrest campaign overnight last night, capturing 10 Palestinians in extensive military operations in Palestinian territories, the army and Palestinian witnesses said. Israeli soldiers abducted one of the men, identified as Ryad Saadi Ayad, in a covert operation in the autonomous Palestinian area adjacent to the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip, his family and witnesses said. Ayad, 27, an employee in a meat processing factory, was arrested some 200 meters inside the self-rule area by soldiers backed up by two tanks and a jeep.
Israeli public radio confirmed that "soldiers from a special unit disguised as Palestinians abducted Ayad for his involvement in mortar fire against Israeli targets." Ayad does not belong to any Palestinian militant group but is a distant relative of Masood Hussein Ayad, a colonel in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Force-17 elite bodyguard unit, they said. The colonel was killed in an Israeli helicopter raid in February. The Israeli Army suspected him of being a liaison agent in the Gaza Strip for the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
Earlier, Israeli troops moved into the autonomous town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin in the northern West Bank, and arrested four brothers, including Nasser Zakarni, a member of the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement, witnesses said. A firefight broke out but no one was wounded and units of the Israeli Army left the area with their captives, they said.
However, hopes for a breakthrough in the stalled Middle East peace process jumped yesterday as US officials said Washington’s special envoy was returning, while a radical offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah movement said it was signing up to his truce call.
US Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said Anothony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general, would be back for an initial four or five days, and would probably "be coming and going" in a bid to push the Palestinians to stick to their cease-fire while urging Israel to ease restrictions on the territories.
"The goal of all that is to get back to Mitchell and Tenet," he said, referring to the internationally approved plans to defuse 15 months of violence and open the door to political negotiations.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he hoped the visit "will set a timetable and mechanism to implement Mitchell and Tenet and also to end the (Israeli) closure and siege and for Israel to pull back to their positions of Sept. 28, 2000," when the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began. The Tenet understanding, named after US Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, sets out a mechanism for implementing a cease-fire, after which the Mitchell Plan can be set in motion.
Arafat told reporters he hoped "the Zinni visit will go in the right direction so that we can put things back on track on the basis of what we agreed" in previous rounds of peace talks.
Hours after the sudden announcement of Zinni’s return the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a hard-line splinter group from Arafat’s Fatah movement, said in a statement they would adhere to the Palestinian leader’s Dec. 16 call for an end to attacks on Israel. "We pledge an absolute commitment to all the decisions issued by Arafat and the presidency," said the statement from the group, which has carried out a number of deadly attacks on Israel.
