Abdel-Raheem Al Nubani, a Colonel in Force 17, was apprehended by Israeli troops north of Ramallah. Al Nubani is the highest-ranking member of Force 17, to have been arrested to date.
He was seized in the village of Nubani, around 20 kilometres (north of Ramallah, in an operation shortly after 2:00 am (2300 GMT Wednesday), Palestinian officials said.
An elite Israeli unit backed by two armoured personnel carriers swooped on the village, they added.
Meanwhile, pressure mounted on the Israeli government to loosen its grip on the West Bank after senior army officers warned their new commander the occupied cities are a “powder keg.”
Israeli public television said top army officers had pressed General Moshe Yahalon Wednesday for a partial withdrawal, saying weeks of curfews had left the occupied towns on the "verge of a volcanic eruption."
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Thursday that the Israeli army planned to start reducing its presence in West Bank areas determined to be at low risk for staging attacks. The newspaper quoted a senior defense official as saying the army would leave some cities altogether and thin out its presence in others.
Israeli officials have said they are examining ways of relieving the dire conditions in the West Bank, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live under curfews that are lifted from time to time for a few hours.
For his part, the governor of Bethlehem warned that the Israeli reoccupation was hurtling the city towards a humanitarian crisis. "Thousands of residents have lost their jobs, hundreds of others have been arrested, and about 1,500 are without shelter after the destruction of their homes," governor Mohammed Madani told the official WAFA news agency.
The Israeli army lifted the curfew on Nablus from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm (0500 to 1100 GMT) Thursday, but was not allowing people from the surrounding villages into the city, blocking around 1,000 people at checkpoints, AFP said. (Albawaba.com)
