GAZA CITY, 16 August 2003 — Israel is to hand over four West Bank cities to Palestinian security control within the next two weeks, a spokesman for Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan said yesterday.

“At the meeting between Dahlan and (Israeli Defense Minister Shaul) Mofaz, it was agreed that Israel will withdraw from four Palestinian cities in the next two weeks,” spokesman Elias Zananieri said, naming the cities as Jericho, Ramallah, Qalqilya and Tulkarem.

The agreement was reached during a two-hour meeting in occupied Jerusalem between Dahlan and Mofaz, he said, their second meeting in 24 hours. The two had met late Thursday in a bid to rescue a ceasefire declared by Palestinian factions in late June.

No Israeli officials were available to confirm the planned withdrawals. Security officials from both sides are to hold a meeting on Sunday to discuss the details of the transfer of authority, Zananieri said.

Army radio meanwhile said that Dahlan had committed himself to collecting weapons from Palestinian militant groups and identifying their sources of funding. But he did not commit himself to breaking up “terror infrastructure,” as demanded repeatedly by Israel and the United States, it added.

Zananieri refused to confirm or comment on the details of the report. He also refused to say whether the two sides had discussed a Palestinian request for President Yasser Arafat to be allowed to briefly leave his besieged Ramallah headquarters to mourn the death of his sister in Gaza. Mofaz and Dahlan last met two weeks ago but the meeting ended in failure after Mofaz refused to pull troops out of the West Bank cities of Hebron and Ramallah, offering only the much smaller towns of Jericho and Qalqilya.

In other developments:

•More than 3,000 Hamas activists rallied in Gaza City yesterday demanding that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners held in its jails.

The Hamas demand was raised as Israel freed 73 Palestinian prisoners yesterday and announced it would ease travel restrictions on Bethlehem residents traveling to Israel and allow 4,000 Palestinian workers and merchants to work in the Jewish state.

•Israel said it would allow the reopening of two colleges, one of them an Islamic institution, in Hebron which had been closed since January.