TEL
AVIV, Aug. 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli Defense
Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer started a meeting Sunday, August 18,
with Palestinian interior minister Abdel Razaq al-Yahya over a phased
Israeli withdrawal from re-occupied lands, as Ben Eliezer says Israel
has used all its available military methods against the Indifada.
The
two ministers are to discuss plans for a phased withdrawal from
re-occupied Palestinian areas where calm has prevailed and where the
Palestinian security forces can guarantee a clampdown on anti-Israeli
attacks, agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
The
partial pullback, dubbed the "Gaza First" plan, is expected
to start in the Gaza Strip, and possibly in the southern West Bank
towns of Bethlehem and Hebron.
Ben
Eliezer had first presented the plan to Yahya in Jerusalem on August 5
and the two had been set to meet again Thursday but the talks were
postponed.
Despite
Palestinian fears that Israel could try to chalk up credit for a Gaza
pullback while maintaining its stranglehold on the re-occupied West
Bank, Israeli officials said the plan could also apply to Bethlehem
and even Hebron.
Under
the scheme, Palestinian security forces would take control of the
areas vacated by the withdrawing Israeli forces that would move back
to positions held before the Palestinian uprising, or Intifada,
started in September 2000.
Ben
Eliezer had told Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot on Saturday, August 17,
that Israel has used all the possible military methods in its war with
the Palestinians, adding that if a deal is not reached soon between
the two sides, the confrontations will continue for years.
Despite
the general lull in the fighting, with no bombings in Israel for more
than a fortnight, three Palestinians were shot Sunday along the edge
of the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, which faces the coastal Jewish
settlement bloc of Gush Katif, AFP said.
The
three wounded Palestinians included a 16-year-old girl.
Israeli
forces also made two incursions into Palestinian autonomous zones,
arrested a Palestinian Authority worker in Deir El-Balah in the
central Gaza Strip and eight members of the same family in Rafah on
the Egyptian border, Palestinians officials said.
Israeli
army radio also reported shots being fired at troops manning a
checkpoint on the northern edge of Jerusalem, on the road to the West
Bank town of Ramallah. No one was hurt in the incident, it said.
And
the army destroyed two Palestinian homes near a road Israel claims
reserved for Jewish settlers on the outskirts of the village of Luban
al-Sharqiyah in the northern West Bank
