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Israel Decides to Relax Arafat Siege, Assassinates PFLP Leader
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| An Israeli army tank drives near the entrance to the remaining building of Arafat’s besieged headquarters in Ramallah |
OCCUPIED
NABLUS, West Bank, September 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) -
The Israeli government has decided Sunday, September 29, to relax the
siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters
but to keep troops in the area to ensure wanted men inside do not
escape, one day after it assassinated a leader of a Palestinian
resistance group.
Israeli
radio said the decision, taken in a meeting between Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres and chief of staff General Moshe Yaalon, could
be implemented later Sunday.
An
Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent outside the Ramallah
headquarters, which have been under siege for 10 days, said there had
been no movement on the ground and that the building was still
surrounded by 10 Israeli armored vehicles, mostly tanks.
Public
radio said the government, under heavy pressure from
Washington
to lift the siege in line with a U.N. resolution, would be taking a
decision later in the day.
Sharon,
who is due to leave later on a trip to
Moscow
, would be meeting his cabinet chief Dov Weisglass, who has just had
talks in
Washington
with
US
national security adviser Condoleeza Rice.
The
Bush administration wants
Sharon
to apply Security Council resolution 1435 calling for an immediate
lifting of the blockade on Arafat’s headquarters in the
West Bank
city of
Ramallah
.
It
fears that his continued refusal to conform until some 20 wanted
militants holed up with Arafat surrender to
Israel
is damaging
U.S.
efforts to obtain support for an attack on
Iraq
.
The
radio gave no further details as to how far back the troops would
move.
Ben Eliezer, quoted on public radio earlier, said he favored a similar
solution to that which ended a siege by Israeli troops of the Church
of the Nativity in
Bethlehem
in May.
That
standoff ended with a deal under which 13 Palestinian resistance
fighters were exiled to foreign countries, a move that cause
significant political damage to Arafat.
Meanwhile,
a leader of the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) was assassinated late Saturday, September 28, in the
northern West Bank town of Tulkarem as he was handling an explosive
device, Palestinian security sources said.
Kader
Diab, 24, a local chief of the Ali Mustapha Brigades, had been wanted
by Israeli forces, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The
armed wing was named after the former head of the PFLP, Ali Abu
Mustapha, who was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter strike in
August last year.
Meanwhile,
the Israeli army has shut its main security liaison office with the
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said
Saturday night.
The
army shut the Palestinian offices in the northern Gaza Strip by the
border town of
Beit Hanun
Thursday, September 26, and confiscated the Palestinian officers’
weapons, the sources said.
The
office was on the same property as Israeli military offices and had
been in operation since 1994 as a result of the
Oslo
peace accords that inaugurated Palestinian self-rule in the
West Bank
and Gaza Strip. The Israeli army refused to comment on whether the
office had been shutdown.
During
the demonstrations which took place in
Gaza
on Saturday to mark the second anniversary of the intifada, the
Israeli army clashed with demonstrators and a teenager was killed.
Mohammad
Abu Ajwa, 17, was killed when a group of Palestinian youths, who had
just attended a commemorative demonstration in the Gaza Strip town of
Deir
el-Balah, clashed with Israeli soldiers manning a position near the
adjacent Jewish settlement of Netzarim, Palestinian security sources
said.
Three
more Palestinians were wounded in the same incident, while similar
clashes left seven youths hurt near Beit Lahia and three in Khan Yunis
following a 3,000-strong demonstration, official Palestinian sources
said.
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