Israel Withdraws From Bethlehem, Enters Tulkarem

NABLUS, West Bank, August 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Hours after withdrawing from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Israeli occupation troops raided the Tulkarem refugee camp on Tuesday, August 20, sparking clashes that left one Palestinian dead and at least three others wounded, security sources on both sides said.

Even as the Palestinian Authority was taking over security responsibility for the West Bank town of Bethlehem, following two months of Israeli re-occupation, the army continued its operations only a few miles away.

Tanks and jeeps raided the autonomous Palestinian town of Dura, west of the southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil (Hebron), arresting dozens of people, Palestinian witnesses said.

Under the “Gaza, Bethlehem First” plan agreed on Sunday, August 18, Israeli forces moved out of Bethlehem as a confidence-building measure aimed at gradually easing the tension between the two sides.

Bethlehem and Gaza are supposed to be the first two Palestinians areas where Israeli troops will pull back to pre-intifada lines, in exchange for a Palestinian crackdown on resistance fighters.

The army is still deployed around Bethlehem, while Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Qalqilya, Tulkarem and Jenin are still occupied.

On Tuesday morning, two more Palestinians were arrested in Ramallah, and one more in Salfit north of Ramallah, military sources said.

The Israeli troops, killed 27-year-old Issam Jayusi, member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The army recently killed the group’s Tulkarem leader in one of its so-called “targeted killings”.

Palestinian witnesses had said earlier that four Palestinians were wounded in the operation in Tulkarem.

An Israeli military spokesman said the army abducted at least 15 Palestinians, as its tanks and armored personnel carriers invaded the camp, backed by helicopters, said AFP.

Iman Zorb, a 15-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by soldiers posted near the Jewish settlement of Morag in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said.

Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed by a sniper from the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades near the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif in the central Gaza Strip Tuesday morning, the army said.

The military wing of the Hamas Palestinian Resistance Group said in a statement faxed to AFP that the attack was in revenge for the killing by the army two weeks ago of one of their members, Hossam Hamdan.

Meanwhile, Information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo will head the Palestinian delegation due to discuss reforms with representatives from the leading Middle East diplomatic players this week in Paris, a Palestinian official said Tuesday.

Labor minister Ghassan Khatib said the delegation would include nine officials, including himself, newly appointed finance minister Salam Fayad, economy minister Maher al-Masri, as well as representatives of the private sector and NGOs.

Mid-level officials from the so-called quartet - the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia - plus Japan, Norway, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are to meet in the French capital on August 22 and 23.

Khatib told AFP the delegation would brief the donor countries on the status of the reforms pledged by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in May and would “discuss what funds and measures are needed to overcome the difficulties facing the Palestinian Authority”.

The quartet, which met once before in London in June, is known as the International Task Force on Reform, and is charged with developing benchmarks and performance standards for Palestinian civil reform efforts.

In Gaza, the head of Palestinian preventive security in the Gaza Strip said Tuesday his men had arrested a man accused of betraying the slain military chiefs of Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to Israel.

Colonel Rashid Abu Shpak said his forces arrested two weeks ago the “collaborator” who had guided Israeli forces to kill Salah Shehada, the head of Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, and Jihad al-Omarayn, head of thel Fatah offshoot.

Shehada, who topped Israel’s most-wanted list, was killed together with 15 other people, including nine children, on July 22 when an Israeli F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb on the Gaza City neighborhood where he was hiding out.

Al-Omarayn, a colonel in the Palestinian security forces, was killed together with Wael Al-Nimra, his nephew and bodyguard, when a bomb blew apart their car in Gaza City on July 4.

Abu Shpak identified the man arrested as Akram Mohammed al-Zatma, a 22-year-old student from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

He said the accused had been recruited by the Israeli internal security service Shin Beth in July 2000 and assigned to follow the two militant chiefs, whose organizations have killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and shooting rampages in Israeli cities.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon described the killing of Shehada as one of the army’s “one of the most successful operations”.