JERUSALEM, 20 November 2005 — Israeli troops and security forces yesterday arrested at least five Palestinians at checkpoints across the West Bank, all of whom were carrying some form of weapon, officials said.
One youngster, whom an army spokeswoman said was 17, was stopped with two pipe bombs at Salem checkpoint at the northernmost tip of the West Bank.
A short while later, three other youngsters were stopped by troops at the Huwwara checkpoint outside Nablus carrying two knives, a loaded ammunition clip for an M16 rifle and a number of bullets for a Mag machine gun, she said.
It was not clear how old the suspects were.
In a third incident, Israeli border police manning a checkpoint between Jerusalem and the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem arrested a Palestinian woman in her 20s who was carrying a knife, Palestinian and Israeli security sources said.
The arrests came a day after Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man near the southern city of Hebron. The victim was named by Palestinian security sources as 24-year-old Zeid Abu Eshi.
The army said he was a member of Hamas, but Palestinian sources could not confirm whether the man had ties to the radical group.
Hundreds attended Eshi’s funeral in Hebron on Saturday, an AFP correspondent said.
Palestinian Teen Killed in Gun Battle
Two rival clans and Palestinian police exchanged fire in a dispute over land in the area of a former Israeli settlement in Gaza, killing a 17-year-old civilian and wounding five people, Palestinian officials said yesterday.
The firefight Friday evening was the first violent clash over former settlement-area land since Israel left the Gaza Strip in September. After the fatal shooting, dozens of people, including gunmen, vandalized a police station in the nearby town of Khan Younis and set two police cruisers on fire, said the governor of the area, Hosni Zourab.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has said the former settlement land would be used for the public good, including housing projects, universities and nature reserves. Private land claims will be examined, but plots expropriated by Israel for the settlements will not automatically be returned to their owners, officials have said.
Palestinian security sources said yesterday that the half-acre plot of land was in the public domain and located in the area of the dismantled settlement of Neve Dekalim. But without clear-cut maps of the area, it was not immediately clear whether the land formerly was part of Neve Dekalim, or nearby, they said.
Before Israel’s pullout from Gaza, settlers and the Israeli military controlled about one-fifth of the crowded coastal strip. The clash over land underscored Abbas’ difficulties in imposing order in chaotic Gaza.
Two clans staked competing claims to the land at issue in Friday’s dispute, Palestinian officials said. One of the clans, the Astals, had fenced off the area.
When police came to tear down the fence, a firefight erupted. Seventeen-year-old Naef Astal was killed and five people were wounded, including two policemen.
Police arrested three people and took them to a lockup in Khan Younis. Later Friday, dozens of people broke into the police station, demanding the release of the detainees, then vandalized the building, police said.
Hamas, meanwhile, said yesterday it has asked Egypt to delay talks on renewing a truce with Israel until after the Jan. 25 Palestinian parliament election.
The Egyptian government had brokered an informal truce that expires at the end of the year, and has invited Palestinian factions to Cairo to talk about extending the cease-fire for another year. Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri said the group has accepted the invitation, but a date has not been set.
Earlier this week, the Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said his group is not inclined to renew the truce, citing what he alleged were repeated violations by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“The prevailing political atmosphere doesn’t encourage such a dialogue (with Egypt) to take place soon,” Hamas quoted Mashaal as telling Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s Ketziot tent camp in a telephone address. Mashaal’s comments were released in a Hamas statement yesterday.
