OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 12 March — Israel freed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from his three-month confinement in the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, but tightened the screws on the Palestinian territories by occupying parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and blindfolding more than 1,200 men and taking them for questioning.

“Following the arrest of six Palestinians demanded by Israel of the Palestinian Authority, the prime minister has decided to put an end to the restrictions on Yasser Arafat’s movements inside the Authority’s territories,” said a statement from the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office.

It was still unclear whether the Palestinian leader will be able to travel to an important Arab summit in Beirut at the end of this month scheduled to discuss a major Saudi peace initiative for the region. The statement mentioned the restrictions on Arafat traveling abroad, hinting they were still in place, prompting the Palestinians to dismiss the announcement as “not enough”.

Top Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rudeina described the decision as “insolent” while Palestinian Cabinet Secretary General Ahmad Abdel Rahman stressed that “the most important (thing) is to lift the siege imposed on the Palestinian people and stop the dirty war launched against our people.”

Arafat said in an interview broadcast yesterday that the Israeli Army’s conduct while rounding up Palestinians in West Bank refugee camps amounted to “new Nazi racism”. “You saw what they put on the detainees from Tulkarem refugee camp — those numbers on their arms?” Arafat told Abu Dhabi television, referring to a three-day sweep of the West Bank camp last week. “Is that not what they say the Nazis did to the Jews? What do they have to say about this matter? Is this not a new Nazi racism?” he said in the interview, recorded in his headquarters in Ramallah.

Earlier, four Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops, while the body of a fifth was found in the Gaza Strip, medical sources said, bringing the death toll in the 17-month conflict to 1,472.

The army also conducted large-scale roundups of Palestinian men in the West Bank for interrogation. About 600 were taken in the northern town of Qalqilya after troops stormed the area, a similar number in the West Bank refugee camp of Dheishe, near Bethlehem, and 100 more in the nearby village of Artas, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said. In Qalqilya and Dheishe, the army demanded all men between 15 and 45 years old gather in one spot before handcuffing and blindfolding them and taking them away.

Since Feb. 28, the Israeli Army has been carrying out sweeps for suspected militants in refugee camps and cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in these incursions.

Two Palestinians were shot dead yesterday when troops and tanks took over Qalqilya, and a Palestinian policeman was killed and two were wounded when tanks, bulldozers and jeeps advanced into Palestinian autonomous territory near the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, security officials said.

A 17-year-old boy was killed when a group came under fire in the main street of a village near Hebron in the West Bank for reasons which were not clear, hospital sources said.

Meanwhile, pressure continued to build behind Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace initiative, which has been welcomed by a number of Western countries.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Sunday hailed the fact that Riyadh had “openly joined the peace process,” after talks in Paris with French President Jacques Chirac, adding that “the Saudi Arabian proposals are a positive development.”

Jordan’s King Abdallah and an Iraqi presidential envoy flew to Damascus yesterday before a regional tour by US Vice President Dick Cheney, who is lobbying for Arab support to oust the Baghdad regime.

Abdallah held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad on the state of the Palestinian revolt and preparations for the Arab summit in Beirut, and left Damascus after a few hours’ visit, the official Syrian news agency said.

Abdallah and Bashar discussed the “summit agenda and inter-Arab contacts ahead of the summit,” Syria’s official SANA news agency reported.

The UN Security Council will hold a public debate on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis today at the request of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Annan’s spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

“The secretary-general asked for the meeting so that he can make a public appeal to the two parties,” Eckhard said.

He said the appeal would be “to get the violence under control, to respond to United States pressure to get back to the negotiating table, and to see if we can’t get a political process working again.”