The United States and European Union decided Saturday to publish a joint declaration calling on Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to halt military actions against the Palestinians.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry said that the EU and Washington are "preparing a diplomatic initiative that will call on Sharon to implement an immediate cease-fire, as well as request that both sides return to the negotiating table."
A spokesperson for the Dutch Foreign Ministry added that representatives from the U.S. and EU in Tel Aviv may present Sharon with the initiative as early as Sunday morning.
Sharon said Friday that he was dropping his insistence on a week of calm before the two sides begin implementing a truce.
Raids
Meanwhile, Israeli helicopters fired rockets on Palestinian targets in central Gaza City, shortly after launching a raid north of the city. Two women, including a member of the police forces, were injured when rockets hit a police station in the city center, Palestinian security sources said Saturday. Several buildings near the police station were damaged, witnesses said.
The raids also targeted buildings sheltering security forces as well as the Palestinian prison administration, the security sources said. The army said it raided a position in Khan Yunis earlier Saturday, which it said was used by Palestinians to fire on soldiers and settlers.
Another Palestinian security official said the raids were carried out by tanks and not helicopters.
PFLP
In another development, a man wanted by Israel over his alleged involvement in the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister has been arrested by Palestinian secret services, a Palestinian security source revealed.
Majdi al-Rimawi, who was singled out by Israel as the mastermind of Rehavam Zeevi's October 17 assassination, "has been arrested by Palestinian secret services," an official from the preventive security services told AFP Saturday.
The source did not say when or where the arrest took place, but that Rimawi, an operations officer in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who allegedly recruited Zeevi's assassins, was believed to be in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
A PFLP official later confirmed Rimawi's arrest, which he said took place on February 26 in Ramallah. "This is not a smart move from the Palestinian Authority to order political arrests when we're facing Israeli massacres," he said, declining to identify himself.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "is merely trying to please the US administration but, as when he arrested three PFLP members in Nablus two weeks ago, he won't gain anything out it," the official added, stressing that "the Israeli siege around Arafat's offices would probably not be lifted."
A senior Israeli official said last month that Rimawi needed to be detained before Israel would consider lifting the travel ban on Arafat.
Tulkarem
Almost 600 Palestinians, including some 60 members of the security services, were rounded up by the Israeli army in the northern West Bank refugee camp of Tulkarem over the past 24 hours and taken to Israel for interrogation.
The Israeli army occupied Tulkarem and the two nearby refugee camps Thursday. After fighting that killed at least eight Palestinians and one Israeli soldier, Tulkarem camp and city were still occupied Saturday.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades told AFP that the Palestinian man who was shot dead Friday afternoon by Israeli police in east Jerusalem was on his way to blow himself up.
An anonymous caller said that a videotape of Mahmud Salah, a 23-year-old from the West Bank village of Beit Wazan, had been recorded before he went to carry out his mission.
Israeli police said the man was carrying a bomb on him in east Jerusalem and was on his way to carrying out a suicide attack in the Neve Yaakov Jewish settlement in the area. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
