GAZA, 30 July 2005 — A Palestinian family released two United Nations Development Program employees yesterday afternoon, hours after kidnapping them in an attempt to secure the release of a clan member seized the day before by members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.

Officials from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the mainstream Fatah movement, to which Al-Aqsa is linked, began negotiating with the Abed clan for the release of the abductees, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem and an Australian woman, shortly after they were dragged at gunpoint from a United Nations vehicle outside Gaza City’s Adam Hotel.

The Abed clan threatened to kill the two if Jihad Abed, a senior Palestinian security official kidnapped Thursday by members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, was not freed.

A spokesman for the Abed clan accused the PA of not doing enough to secure Jihad’s release, and Palestinian officials promised yesterday to work to this end.

Jihad Abed, his wife and three children were taken from their car Thursday afternoon and driven to the Al-Bureij refugee camp. The wife and children were later released.

Two foreign development specialists in the Gaza Strip were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen earlier this month, but were released unharmed within hours.

The kidnappings are the latest signs of lawlessness in the Gaza Strip, where the PA is struggling to assert its primacy ahead of the upcoming Israel withdrawal, slated to get underway in mid-August.

Israeli officials have expressed concern that militants could open fire on the evacuating troops and settlers so as to be able to claim the Israelis are retreating under fire.

But Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has refused calls by top army officers to greenlight a military offensive in the Gaza Strip before or even simultaneously with the pullout.

The authoritative Ha’aretz daily reported yesterday that Mofaz believes in first exhausting all diplomatic attempts to persuade the Palestinian Authority to act against military organizations.

The recommendation for the offensive was made Tuesday by Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the head of the army’s Southern Command (which includes the Gaza Strip), and Brig. Dan Kochavi, who commands the army forces in the Strip.

They said a continuation of the recent escalation in the Strip — 80 to 100 shooting incidents a week — could lead to heavy Israeli casualties, since mortar shells fired at the evacuating troops and settlers would “almost certainly” result in many deaths.

The two officers recommended sending three infantry brigades to seize two “security zones,” one in the north, the second in the center. Both zones would be five to seven kilometers wide, sufficient to thwart mortar launches at the adjacent settlements.

The Israeli forces would leave as soon as the evacuation was complete. Mofaz believes the PA can stop attacks by the major militant organizations and is concerned that the army’s stay in the two “security zones” would cause a great deal of friction with the local Palestinian population and cause the PA’s tenuous hold on Gaza to collapse.