RAMALLAH, West Bank, July 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Tuesday sacked the head of his police forces, as Israeli forces continued their policy of abductions, seizing Palestinian students at Hebron polytechnic institute and elsewhere around the West Bank.

General Ghazi Jabali was dismissed as part of reforms to the national security apparatus, Palestinian officials said Tuesday, July 2, 2002, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"President Arafat decided to dismiss Ghazi Jabali as part of the reform process launched by the Palestinian Authority, particularly as regards the security services," the officials told AFP, on condition of anonymity.

Arafat also sacked Mahmud Abu Marzuk, the head of Palestinian civil defense, the same sources said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation troops continued their policy of occupying cities and villages, conducting house-to-house searches, and abducting Palestinian civilians, as well as security PA men.

They nabbed six border policemen in the southern Gaza Strip, and a leader of the Islamic resistance group Jihad.

They also briefly detained two Palestinian security chiefs in Hebron, where troops likewise rounded up polytechnic students heading into an exam and arrested several of them, officials said.

Early Tuesday, the Israeli army lifted a curfew in the West Bank city of Hebron to allow students to take exams - then rounded up about 300 Palestinian students at a college for questioning, according to Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz.

Israeli soldiers ordered male and female students at the Palestinian Polytechnic Institute, a two-year-college, into separate yards and checked identification cards and questioned students, witnesses said.

At least seven students were taken away by the army as part of Israel's search for suspected Palestinian resistance activists, witnesses said. Also, the army searched houses in Hebron looking for students, and a number were blindfolded and taken away, witnesses added.

Near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli special forces backed by tanks surrounded a border police post and called by loudspeaker for the men inside to give themselves up.

The six men inside surrendered and were taken off to Israel, a Palestinian security official said, describing the operation as a "kidnapping."

Near Ramallah in the central West Bank, an Israeli army column entered the village of Burhem and abducted two people, Palestinian officials said.

The occupation army also raided the Palestinian village of Az Zababida, south of the Jenin, making searches and arrests, a Palestinian security source said, AFP reported.

The troops carried out house-to-house searches, rounding up some 30 Palestinians, the source said. No clashes were reported during the raid.

And Palestinian witnesses said Jewish settlers near Ramallah set fire to fields near the village of Sinjil, close to Ramallah. No details were immediately available.

On the political front, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended Tuesday a planned visit by junior Foreign Office minister Mike O'Brien to the Middle East for talks with Arafat.

A British Foreign Office official was to hold talks with Arafat late Tuesday, reaffirming London's recognition of the Palestinian president despite U.S. calls for his removal from power.

A spokesman for Blair said O'Brien would meet Arafat at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, where he is effectively under siege from Israeli troops surrounding the compound.

The meeting is the first between Arafat and the British government since U.S. President George W. Bush called last week for Arafat to be replaced as Palestinian leader, saying his Palestinian Authority was tainted by terrorism and corruption.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell followed that up at the weekend by saying Washington was no longer talking to Arafat and had no plans to do so in the future.

In a rare public divergence, Blair refused to back Washington's tough line against Arafat but instead, like other European leaders, said it is up to the Palestinian people to choose who should rule them.

Asked about the difference in approach by the governments in Washington and London, Blair's spokesman said: "We have said that we will continue to talk to those people who are elected representatives of the Palestinian people."