The Palestinian Authority and the Israeli army have reached an agreement on a ceasefire in the West Bank town of Beit Jala re-occupied by Israel since Monday night, reports said.
Palestinian officials, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP an understanding was reached between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, agreeing that Israeli forces will withdraw from the Palestinian town following an unspecified period of calm, possibly overnight.
One senior security official said orders had been given to Palestinian fighters not to shoot, adding that the town had been quiet for two hours.
Radio Israel reported that the agreemet went into effect on 14:30. It reported that there has been no firing on the Gilo Jewish settlement since then. If this calm continues to eight in the evening local time, the Israeli army should start withdrawing from the Palestinian town.
However, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer ordered the army to stay in Beit Jala until the agreement is finalized, army sources told the radio.
Arafat and Peres had held two telephone conversations overnight, top Palestinian officials said Wednesday.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP that Arafat had insisted that Israeli forces withdraw from the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, which they re-occupied early Tuesday to crack down on Palestinian resistance fighters shooting at a nearby Jewish settlement.
"Peres promised this would be the case, but this promise has not been followed up on," Erakat said.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo was also quoted by the agency as saying that when Peres called "he tried to portray the invader as the victim and asked for a guarantee of a ceasefire for Israeli forces to withdraw."
He said Arafat had told him this should be done immediately and under the supervision of some 10 European Union technical advisors to the Palestinian Authority who live in the town.
Later Wednesday, at a joint news conference with visiting Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero, Peres said that Israeli troops did not intend to "remain forever" in Beit Jala, but gave no indication how the situation would develop in the very short term.
"Arafat promised to do everything he could to stop the fire," said Peres, who added: "If a ceasefire is reached, it'll be a matter of a day or so" before Israel withdraws from Beit Jala.
Abed Rabbo said Israel had rejected the idea, adding that a ceasefire had been observed by the Palestinians at 1:00am (1100 GMT Tuesday), but claiming the Israelis had not used the opportunity to pull out.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Ben Eliezer had decided the army will stay until further notice, according to Haaretz newspaper.
Abed Rabbo said the army instead used the lull to expand their incursion - the longest in 11 months of violence - into the neighboring refugee camp of Aida and other parts of Beit Jala.
He said the Palestinians would not agree to the withdrawal becoming part of new negotiations.
"Our people have the right to resist, and we will resist with all our capabilities," he said.
Israeli radio said that, during the first phone call, Arafat made a firm commitment to stop the gunfire from Beit Jala towards Gilo.
During their second talk, the Palestinian president called for Israeli troops to leave Beit Jala, but made no mention of putting an end to the shooting, it added.
The radio said Sharon, for his part, had spoken with US ambassador in Tel Aviv Dan Kurtzer to tell him that he "will not tolerate shooting against Jerusalem, in the same way that the Americans and the British would not tolerate shooting in their respective capitals.”
Meanwhile, the United States called on Israel to withdraw its forces from Beit Jala, saying their latest incursion into a Palestinian-controlled area would "only make matters worse."
"The Israelis need to understand that incursions like this will not solve the security problems, they only make matters worse," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher in Washington.
FOUR PALESTINIANS, ISRAELI KILLED AS CRISIS WORSENS
Four Palestinians and an Israeli man were killed on Wednesday in the Occupied Territories.
Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, while an unknown Jewish group claimed responsibility for a Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem. A fourth Palestinian died of injured he sustained earlier in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Fateh movement, claimed responsibility for the killing Wednesday of an Israeli near Nablus in the West Bank, AFP and Haaretz newspaper reported.
"Our fighters ambushed west of Nablus, on the road to Tulkarem ... the car of a settler, a reserve officer in the Zionist occupation army called Oleg Sonikov," the group said in a statement faxed to AFP in Beirut.
The group's fighters "liquidated him with machineguns and guns at about 10:00am."
"This courageous Jihad (holy war) operation is in revenge for the killing of martyred leader Abu Ali Mustapha," the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was assassinated by the Israeli army on Monday.
The group, which has carried out numerous roadside shootings during the 11-month-old Palestinian uprising, vowed to "pursue the attacks and strikes against Zionist enemy targets and settlers to clean the land of Palestine from the Zionist invaders."
Israeli television reported gun battles between soldiers and Palestinian resistance fighters in Beit Jala, which Israel handed over to the Palestinians in 1995 under interim peace accords.
ARMORED INVASION OF DEIR EL BALAH
Palestinian security sources said Israeli tanks also poured into the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Deir El Balah late Tuesday, setting off heavy gun battles.
Witnesses told AFP that Israeli forces also attacked the Palestinian refugee camp of Aida in Bethlehem in a bid to clamp down on Palestinian resistance fighters, who turned out in force Tuesday for the funeral of chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustapha, in Ramallah.
In addition, Palestinian security sources said that Israeli tanks entered the Palestinian autonomous town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, destroying a Palestinian security post in the process.
According to AFP, the attacks came as anger soared in the Arab World against Israel and its strongest ally, the United States. Palestinians complained anew that the Jewish state was using US weapons for its policy of "targeted killings" of Palestinian officials in violation of US law, said AFP.
Israel receives billions in US military aid every year, and with it purchases military hardware ranging from F-16s to Apache attack helicopters and Hellfire missiles.
Some 30 pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged a noisy but peaceful protest outside the White House Tuesday, waving Palestinian flags and signs denouncing Israeli "state terrorism," AFP said.
Boucher said Washington had not determined that Israel was violating the Arms Export Control Act that requires purchases of US weapons to be used for internal security and legitimate self-defense.
"The act contains provisions on reporting to Congress in the event of substantial violations of those agreements," he said, cited by the agency.
"No decisions have been made that such a report would be required in the current circumstances."
Boucher stressed US officials had repeatedly told Israel that Washington opposed "targeted killings," like that of Mustapha, no matter what kind of weapons were used, and that it also frowned on the use of heavy weaponry in the conflict.
"It's not a question of the weapons so much as it is a question of the event," he said. "Obviously, they are aware and we are aware of the restrictions on the use of American weaponry."
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 572 Palestinians, and 154 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
