Jewish Settlers Take Over Palestinian Homes, Tenet Meets Yahya
 |
|
Israeli soldiers pick up a Palestinian killed while trying to infiltrate from the Gaza Strip into Israel
|
NABLUS,
West Bank, August 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Around 100
Jewish settlers on Sunday, August 11, took over two Palestinian houses
in a village close to a settlement, Palestinian witnesses said.
The
settlers, some of them armed, forced out the families in the two
houses on the edge of Luban al-Sharqiyah, which lies just west of Eli
settlement, where a Jewish couple were shot dead by Palestinian
resistance activists last week, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The
attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.
There
was no shooting as the house occupation took place, witnesses said. The
Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz, in its online edition said the
settlers moved in after holding a memorial service for the slain
couple, whose toddler son was also injured in the roadside ambush.
Meanwhile,
AFP reported that a Palestinian man was killed by Israeli soldiers
Sunday as he tried to break into the Jewish settlement of Dugit in the
northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officials and witnesses
said.
At
the same time, the Brigades claimed responsibility for the resistance
operation which took place in the Mekhora settlement, some 15
kilometers (nine miles0 southeast of the West Bank town of Nablus,
where a Jewish woman settler was gunned down and her husband injured.
The
killing came just hours after an Israeli tank opened fire on a
Palestinian municipality worker in Nablus who was driving through the
re-occupied city with a permit allowing him to carrying on working
despite the Israeli curfew.
On
the diplomatic front, a Palestinian delegation holding high-level
talks in Washington met Sunday with CIA chief George Tenet to discuss
reforming Palestinian security forces who have failed to stem
anti-Israeli attacks and on occasions even aided them.
Tenet,
who put forward proposals for downsizing the Palestinian security
services in June, met at the CIA’s U.S. headquarters in Langley,
Virginia, with newly appointed Palestinian interior minister Abdel
Razeq Al-Yahya, officials said.
“They
had a good, useful discussion,” said a source close to the talks. The
CIA is also said to be quietly working on updating the Tenet security
plan, a key blueprint for bringing about an Israeli-Palestinian
cease-fire and creating conditions for resuming regional peace
negotiations, according to U.S. officials.
The
plan, negotiated by the CIA chief in June 2001, called for the
imprisonment of suspected terrorists, weapons confiscations, regular
exchanges of intelligence information between Israel and the
Palestinians, and Israeli restraint in conducting strikes against
Palestinian facilities.
The
meetings in Washington are the first high-level contacts between the
Palestinians and the United States since U.S. President George W. Bush
called in June for Arafat to be dumped, said AFP.
According
to the Jerusalem Post, Al-Yahya told Tenet that the PA policemen
trying to do their job face arrest or worse at the hands of the
Israeli forces.
Meanwhile,
the paper added that a CIA delegation visited the Middle East
recently, and secretly drew up a detailed plan for security reforms in
the Palestinian Authority. The delegation spent several weeks in
Israel and the Palestinian areas, and met with top security officials
on meeting with top security officials on both sides, it added.
U.S.
daily newspaper, the Washington Post, said that Al-Yahya is looking to
Egypt and Jordan, along with the United States, to help train the
restructured Palestinian security forces.
The
paper added that he also spoke with Tenet about using the Jordanian
model of having a national police force that unites police and
security forces under one command.
Implementation
of what one source described as a “fairly ambitious” security
proposal would require the solution of a variety of logistical and
political problems, including where such a force can be trained as
long as Israeli forces occupy the West Bank and areas of Gaza and
whether Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will support the effort,
said the Post.
|
