RAMALLAH, West Bank, December 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Citing the Israeli occupation and curfews, the Palestinian leadership Sunday, December 22, postponed January's presidential and legislative elections until after the Israeli army withdraws from reoccupied self-rule areas.

"The Palestinian leadership decided to hold the elections after the Israelis withdraw from the (reoccupied) Palestinian territories and according to the electoral law," the leadership statement said after a meeting in Ramallah.

"There is no way the elections can be held on January 20," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told Agence France-Presse (AFP), adding that under the electoral law, 100 days were needed from the announcement of polls for the preparation of the ballot.

Erakat said the Israeli curfews, occupation and blockades of Palestinian cities, towns and villages in almost the entire West Bank made the holding of elections unfeasible.

The polls had been scheduled for January 20 but the electoral committee recommended delaying them, saying Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank and the closures imposed made them impossible.

"We met with the president and recommended to him that it is highly important to delay the elections because it is impossible to hold them in the current circumstances, owing to the siege, the occupation and other circumstances," Ali Jerbawi said Friday, December 20.

Israeli forces streamed into the West Bank on June 19, imposing strict curfews and cutting off communities from each other as they persistently hunted down suspect resistance activists, hundreds of whom have been detained or questioned.

The lockdowns have made it almost impossible for the population to move around, crippling the economy, sending already chronic unemployment soaring and undermining hopes that voters could make it to the ballot boxes, as the army shows no sign of withdrawing.

Israel is demanding the Palestinian Authority undertake sweeping democratic and security reforms. However, it wanted the presidential elections delayed for fear Arafat, whom it wants dumped and who enjoys the support of most Palestinians, could win a new term as leader.

Washington also wants to see Arafat dropped, claiming that he is an obstacle to the peace process.

In (occupied) Jerusalem, the head of Israel's internal security service, the Shin Beth, was quoted by public radio as saying the PA had lost control of the security situation in the West Bank.

Before the reoccupation last summer, Israeli forces smashed the Palestinians' security infrastructure in a series of air and land strikes.

Shin Beth chief Avi Dichter, whose agents operate in the Palestinian occupied territories, told the weekly cabinet meeting that the Palestinian leadership still maintained control in the Gaza Strip, which has been heavily hit in 26 months of crackdown on the Intifada, but which has not been reoccupied.

He stressed, however, that the PA faced a mounting challenge from the main resistance group Hamas, whose armed wing spearheads anti-Israeli attacks and which has gained increasing support from Palestinians.

In response to the rising crime rate in the Palestinian cities whose infrastructure has crumbled, the al-Khalil branch of Arafat's Fatah movement issued leaflets threatening to cut off the hands and feet of people found committing thefts.

The leaflets, seen by an AFP correspondent and signed by Fatah, were handed out in mosques Friday, December 20, in the southern West Bank city.

Early Sunday, Israeli armor staged a fresh raid into Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, destroying the home of an Islamic Jihad man blamed for a shooting attack Friday in which a Jewish settler in the Gaza Strip was killed.

The army also destroyed the house of his brother, who was slain in an anti-Israeli attack in April 2000.

Late Saturday, an Israeli soldier was slightly injured when a Palestinian lobbed a grenade at an army position guarding the Jewish settlement of Morag on the outskirts of the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis.

The troops shot dead the attacker, who was identified in an anonymous phone call as 20-year-old Mohsen Fouad Jaber, a member of the left-wing Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).