OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 25 June 2003 — In an apparent attempt to scuttle talks between the Palestinian Authority and militias, Israel clamped down curfew on the West Bank towns of Nablus and Hebron and arrested 150 people.
The raids added to tensions surrounding faltering moves to implement the US-backed road map for ending nearly 33 months of bloodshed and establishing a Palestinian state by 2005.
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Israel had no choice but to pursue militants preparing attacks in the absence of a Palestinian Authority crackdown against them.
“The first purpose of these large-scale arrests is to try to save the road map of peace, to really provide a maintenance operation so that the road map would not disintegrate in front our eyes,” Gissin said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has been trying to persuade Hamas and other militant groups to call a temporary truce, or “hudna”, with Israel to end a cycle of violence that has battered the plan affirmed at a US-led summit on June 4.
Describing the operations in Hebron and Nablus as “Israeli madness”, Palestinian Cabinet Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters: “These arrests are an attempt to sabotage the understanding with Hamas. Israel does not want a cease-fire.”
But Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, a Hamas leader wounded in an Israeli assassination attempt on June 10, said: “We are facing a Zionist assault and it is not logical to ask us to accept a truce under these conditions.”
Parallel talks between top Israeli and Palestinian security officials ended with no final agreement overnight on a proposed Israeli troop pullback from the northern Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
Israeli political sources expected a truce announcement would come from Egyptian mediators set to meet militant leaders in Cairo and be timed to coincide with a visit to the area this weekend by US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Such a declaration, the sources said, would clear the way for finalizing a Gaza-Bethlehem pullback deal.
Once a truce comes into operation, Israel would hold off on military operations in those areas to give the Palestinian Authority a chance to enforce security and would be looking for concrete action such as disarming militants there, the sources said.
“The hudna buys time for Abu Mazen to do what he has to do, but our patience will not be unlimited,” one source said.
The army said yesterday’s West Bank raids were aimed at “terrorists and their helpers” behind bombings and other attacks on Israelis.
Some 150 Palestinians, including suspected militants and people wanted for questioning, were rounded up without resistance in sweeps targeting Hamas in Hebron, an army spokeswoman said. She said five more suspects were arrested in Nablus after clashes with gunmen.
Khaled Amayreh, a pro-Islamic journalist who lives near Hebron, described many of those detained as Hamas sympathizers rather than activists. He said they included elderly men, some women and teenagers.
Meanwhile, five Israeli Arabs accused of financing Hamas were indicted in a district court in Haifa yesterday. Four of them, including Sheikh Raed Salah, who heads the hard-line wing of Israel’s Islamic Movement, were charged with “belonging to a terrorist organization”.
