"Any withdrawal must also involve lifting checkpoints from around the cities to guarantee free movement for all the people," Dahlan

GAZA CITY, August 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A planned withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from two West Bank cities was postponed late Sunday, August 17, as talks between Israeli and Palestinian security officials over the transfer of security responsibility broke down, a Palestinian official said.

Elias Zananieri, spokesman for Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan, said that talks to rubberstamp an Israeli pullback from Jericho and Qalqilya failed after Israel refused to dismantle a checkpoint outside of Qalqilya.

"The meeting ended without any result and without any timetable. There will be no withdrawal tomorrow or the day after," Zananieri told Agence France-Presse (AFP) following the nearly four-hour meeting.

"Israel said they would withdraw from Qalqilya but they want to maintain the checkpoint at the entrance to the city.

"We reject this completely. It goes against the agreement between Dahlan and (Israeli Defense Minister Shaul) Mofaz," he said, referring to a meeting between the two Friday when the withdrawals were agreed.

Despite the failure of the meeting, the two sides agreed to meet again Tuesday, August 19, to continue talking, he said.

Israeli troops withdrew late Sunday, June 29, from the northern Gaza towns of Beit Hanun and Beit Lahia, and from West Bank’s Bethlehem three days after. But the move was dismissed by Palestinians as a sham since occupation forces still besiege the areas on the peripheries.

No Conclusions

Israeli military sources confirmed the Sunday talks had ended "without reaching any conclusion" and said there would be no withdrawal from either town Monday as had been planned.

Instead, senior security officials from both sides would meet again "in a couple of days", the source said, without elaborating on why Sunday's talks had broken down.

Israel said Friday, August 25, it would hand over four West Bank cities to Palestinian security control within the next two weeks -- Jericho and Qalqilya this week, followed by a withdrawal from Tulkarem and Ramallah, with the proviso that calm prevails.

Speaking a day after the meeting, Dahlan stressed the importance of removing army checkpoints from the West Bank.

"Any withdrawal must also involve lifting checkpoints from around the cities to guarantee free movement for all the people," he told reporters in Ramallah.

Mofaz said Sunday that the handover in Ramallah and Tulkarem "will be conditional on a resolution of the problem of the fugitives in each city," in a reference to wanted Palestinian activists.

He approved the transfers at Friday's meeting with Dahlan in a policy U-turn after previously saying no such move would take place.

Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr predicted earlier Sunday that the transfers could begin as early as Monday.

While Amr said the cabinet welcomed the pullbacks, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat charged the Israelis were trying to circumvent the U.S.-backed roadmap for peace.

"We want Israel to implement what was mentioned in the roadmap instead of wasting time," the veteran leader told reporters at his Ramallah headquarters where he has been confined by Israeli forces for nearly 20 months.

The pullbacks are designed to provide much-needed momentum to the roadmap, which has run into a series of obstacles since its launch in Jordan at the beginning of June 2003.

Additional pullbacks were frozen amid fresh violence. Israel has also only released around 350 of the estimated 6,000 Palestinians in its jails.

Palestinian factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are currently observing a three-month ceasefire but a bloody Israeli army raid into Nablus that drew Palestinian retaliatory attacks have lead to fears that the truce is coming apart. 

Islamic Jihad vowed on Thursday, August 14, to avenge the assassination of a local leader in an Israeli army raid in Al-Khalil (Hebron) while the overnight detention of another leader in Qalqilya, Akif Nazal, heightened tensions further.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said that a meeting with Israeli counterparts in the southern Gaza Strip to discuss the removal of more checkpoints near the Morag settlement had ended in failure.

"They said they would not do anything until the Palestinians fight what they called the infrastructure of terrorists," one source said.

Israeli Settler Wounded

In the meanwhile, an Israeli woman was shot in the leg overnight by a suspected Palestinian gunman while in a car on a road near a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, military sources said Monday.

The woman was said to be in a serious condition after the shooting near Yitzar, close to the city of Nablus, but her life was not in danger, medical sources said.

The army combed the area after the attack.

The international community considers Jewish settlements as illegal since they are built in Palestinian territories that had been occupied by Israel.

The shooting came as Israeli army said Monday it had detained a member of the Hamas movement in Al-Khalil and a member of Fatah in separate overnight operations.

Also Monday, several people were injured when a gas canister exploded in a restaurant in central Tel Aviv, Israeli police and fire services said.

Police spokeswoman Shoshi Manzor said that several people had been injured in the explosion on the main Yizhak Sadeh street.

"We are not sure yet whether it was an attack or a gas explosion," she added.