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”.
Zatma
will appear in court in the coming days, Abu Shpak said
