OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 2 June — Amid intense new diplomatic efforts to kick-start peace talks, Israel continued its military operations in the West Bank, reoccupying most of Nablus and sending troops back into Bethlehem and other places to hunt for Palestinian fighters.
The army was conducting for the second straight day a vast operation in Nablus and its neighboring Balata refugee camp, where on Friday troops rounded up hundreds of Palestinians for questioning.
A 23-year-old Palestinian was killed by an Israeli sniper in the Old City of Nablus during the military offensive, Palestinian hospital sources said.
The army also blew up the home of the family of Jihad Titi, an 18-year-old who carried out an attack on Petah Tiqvah, a Tel Aviv suburb, that left two Israelis dead and more than 20 wounded last Monday.
An Israeli Army spokesman earlier told reporters that troops had arrested seven Palestinians in the Tammun area, near Nablus, and another during a raid by soldiers and armored vehicles into Bethlehem’s Dheishe refugee camp. Palestinians said some 30 people were rounded up in Tammun after more than two dozen tanks and armored vehicles imposed a curfew on the area.
Israeli troops backed by dozens of armored vehicles also reoccupied the northern town of Tulkarm late Friday, Palestinian officials told reporters.
Israel’s latest “pinpoint raids” come amid a flurry of diplomatic activity to end the fighting which has left more than 2,000 people on both sides dead since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Saturday and then lobbied for a proposed Middle East peace conference. “We are very concerned about the situation on the ground, about the suffering of the people and we would like to see all this situation changed,” Solana told reporters after the talks at Arafat’s West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.
“For that, we are trying to put forward a new political initiative that can move toward a situation in which all this suffering will disappear,” he said. “I have found President Arafat very determined to move in this direction and I am pleased to hear that,” he said.
Solana was referring to the proposal for a conference which was raised in May by US Secretary of State Colin Powell with the support of the United Nations, the EU and Russia.
Arafat earlier met with the head of the Egyptian intelligence service. Egypt and the United States have been cooperating on plans to reform the Palestinian security services, and US Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet is expected in the region tomorrow.
In Egypt, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had talks with President Hosni Mubarak on how to end the seemingly intractable conflict. Fischer told reporters in Cairo afterward that it was “crucial” for any future peace accords to be guaranteed by the international community.
