HEBRON, West Bank, 30 April — Israeli forces seized the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday, killing nine people and wounding 20 others as an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian activist in the grounds of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.
In another development, Palestinian officials held talks with US and British security experts yesterday on the US plan which seeks to end Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s siege.
“The meeting was very positive. There will be another session today,” according to a senior Palestinian official.
“We have agreed to move the people wanted by Israel in connection with the killing of Israeli minister to a Palestinian prison, most likely, in Jericho,” he said, giving no date.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday “all elements were in place” for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. In addition, the secretary said that the Israeli siege of Arafat’s headquarters would end in the next 48 hours.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said yesterday Israel will end its month-long siege of President Yasser Arafat’s West Bank headquarters in the coming days after the Palestinians transfer wanted activists to British and US guards.
“I believe that in the coming days when a spot has been found for them (the activists) in the Palestinian territories and the apparatus for guarding them is in place, we will completely evacuate the area, and at that moment, Arafat can go wherever he wants,” Ben Eliezer told Israeli public radio.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian information minister, said the Palestinians wanted by Israel will be transferred to a jail in Jericho under international guard as part of a deal.
But, he said the six prisoners would not be extradited to Israel later.
The US-brokered plan to hand the six to US and British jailers at a prison in the West Bank town of Jericho was in keeping with Palestinian law and verdicts, he said.
Abed Rabbo said “it is ridiculous” to suggest the US proposal, agreed to by Israel, allowed for the prisoners to be handed over at a later date.
Abed Rabbo said he expected Arafat’s confinement to end today after details of Bush’s plan had been worked out.
Several Israeli tanks and bulldozers also pushed into the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday, causing an outbreak of heavy shooting, Palestinian security sources told AFP.
Israel launched the Hebron incursion hours after accepting the proposal by President George W. Bush that would restore Arafat’s freedom of movement. The United States yesterday called on Israel to withdraw its troops from Hebron.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States opposed any incursions into the Palestinian territories and noted that that position had been made clear to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Palestinian security sources said nine people, including at least two activists and three security men, were killed after Israeli forces backed by helicopter gunships surged into Hebron overnight and began house-to-house searches. Israeli tanks and armored vehicles prowled the hilly streets of Hebron, where some 400 militant Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among 120,000 Palestinians. Troops ransacked homes, smashing equipment and emptying cupboards, amid loudspeaker warnings that a curfew was in force. “They damaged everything. The children were crying,” said Ahmed Atiya, a 31-year-old Palestinian policeman.
He told Reuters 10 soldiers had smashed through his front door. All men of fighting age had been ordered to stand in the street with their hands raised for more than two hours.
The army attacked Hebron despite repeated US calls for it to leave all Palestinian-ruled areas it has reoccupied. Scores of Palestinians were arrested including members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and fighters linked to Fatah. An Israeli field commander said soldiers detained about 200 people for questioning.
Meanwhile, the Jewish state was still resisting a UN mission to the ravaged Jenin refugee camp. EU envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos, who visited the site yesterday, said it was a human tragedy. “I am deeply moved and leave with a tremendous impression of what I have seen. It’s a human tragedy,” he told reporters.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said yesterday Russia, currently chair of the UN Security Council, will “insist” on UN inspectors being given access to the refugee camp at Jenin.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres yesterday met again with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to try to sway the international body in favor of Israel.
The United Nations included a French Army officer and two Irish police officials yesterday in the fact-finding team. The new members include Maj. Francois Xavier Thomas of the French Army, Peter Fitzgerald, a terrorist expert from Ireland, as a police adviser and a third person, Tyge Lehmann, also from Ireland, as a legal adviser and terrorist expert.
In Bethlehem, an army ambulance removed the body of a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades after an Israeli sniper shot him dead.
A Palestinian source named him as Nidal Abayat, 28, and said he had been standing in the garden of the Church of the Nativity.
Palestinian negotiators said drawn-out talks were on hold until the Israeli snipers held fire and the army allowed food in to the hungry and desperate people inside the church.
A Palestinian official said a deal to allow 18 civilians to leave the besieged holy place had hit a snag.
Israel’s parliamentary speaker scrapped a meeting with Amnesty International’s chief yesterday as the Jewish state tussled with the United Nations over a probe into its assault on Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp.
