GAZA/COPENHAGEN, 29 August — Israeli troops raided Gaza Strip areas again yesterday, overshadowing efforts to proceed with a fragile security deal meant to ease their clampdown on Palestinians and lay groundwork for a cease-fire. Israeli military sources said the air, land and sea raid near Gaza City, the deepest in the area during the 23-month-old Palestinian uprising, was prompted by suspicions of an arms smuggling operation using barrels floating offshore.
Israeli media said that upon examination the containers were apparently refrigerators and not weapons caches. The army had no immediate comment.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer called off security talks set for yesterday with Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel-Razzak Al-Yahya, citing an overnight mortar attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza.
There were no casualties. But Palestinian security forces returned to some posts in the Gaza Strip which Israel had forced them to abandon and in some cases reduced to rubble during the uprising, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
They said the forces took up fewer than half of the posts near Jewish settlements, Israeli checkpoints and border areas under the "Gaza-Bethlehem First" plan, seen as a test for a wider truce.
In central Gaza, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian man as he approached an army post. In West Bank violence, a 32-year-old Palestinian man was killed when a tank opened fire with its machine guns, hitting his home in the Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian witnesses said.
The army had no immediate comment. Israeli troops arrested two Hamas activists in the West Bank. Hamas said Amjad Al-Sayyah was arrested in Nablus and an Israeli security source said Abdel-Khalek Al-Natshe, a Hamas political and military leader, was arrested in Hebron.
The latest developments coincided with a visit by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield, the first time in weeks a US envoy has met Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials in the region to discuss ways to restore calm. In keeping with Washington’s decision to shun Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Satterfield had no plans to meet him, US sources said.
State Department sources in Washington said Satterfield discussed Palestinian political and economic reform, economic aid and increasing security efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. He was due to meet Israeli officials today. "Mr. Satterfield made it very clear his mission is to try and break the deadlock and get the peace process back on track," Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat told reporters.
Earlier yesterday, 11 tanks and armored personnel carriers swept into Sheikh Iljeen, just south of Gaza City, witnesses said. Helicopters and gunboats fired at targets in the surf. The raid came a day after Israel said it would relax restrictions on some Palestinians entering Israel from Bethlehem as "relative quiet" took hold in the West Bank city after it was returned to Palestinian security control last week.
Israeli troops also manned Gaza checkpoints that have restricted Palestinian movements and crippled the economy. Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent attacks. Palestinians call it collective punishment.
Meanwhile, the Danish presidency of the European Union announced yesterday that it was working on a new three-stage Middle East peace plan which envisages the creation of an independent Palestinian state in 2005. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said the plan, based on US President George W. Bush’s policy for the troubled region, would be presented to EU foreign ministers at an informal meeting in the Danish city of Helsingoer tomorrow and Saturday.
"We are going to discuss how the EU and the Middle East quartet, among others, can actively contribute to efforts to realize Bush’s vision of a Palestinian state in three years," he said in a statement. The Danish plan is expected to garner strong support from European governments hoping to send a signal to the Arab world that Europe is still a major player in the troubled Middle East region.
Denmark, which took over the six-month presidency of the EU on July 1, has made peace in the Middle East one of its priorities during its turn at the EU helm. The first phase of the plan calls for a security agreement to be concluded between Israel and the Palestinians ahead of Palestinian elections in January, and aimed at ending the violence that has engulfed the region for almost two years, according to Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende newspaper. (The Independent)
