Israelis shoot suspects in swoop on villages in the West Bank

HEBRON - The Israeli Army yesterday killed a senior Palestinian intelligence officer and an associate in a West Bank raid targeting suspects in attacks on Israelis.

An Army spokesman said troops also arrested 14 wanted Palestinian militants in a swoop on villages in parts of the West Bank handed to Palestinian rule under interim peace deals in the 1990s.

Israeli troops re-occupied Palestinian-ruled towns in the West Bank last month in an offensive the Government said was aimed at rooting out militants blamed for a wave of suicide bombings in a Palestinian uprising launched 19 months ago.

The Army has pulled out of the towns but continues to encircle them and stage raids in what it calls an effort to seize leftover suspects and pre-empt further suicide attacks.

An Army spokesman said the two men killed in Halhoul yesterday were wanted for "many attacks against Israelis" in the Hebron area of the southern West Bank and were shot when they ignored orders to halt and tried to flee from a house that troops had surrounded.

The Army said a third man belonging to Force 17, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's personal guard, was arrested and a fourth escaped.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and United States leaders indicated that a Palestinian state was still on a Middle East peacemaking agenda, despite a vote by Sharon's Likud Party never to accept one.

While Sharon wrestled with a party leadership challenge and Washington sought his assurances over the Likud decision, Yasser Arafat toured West Bank cities for the first time in five months and told Palestinians they would win a state.

But the Palestinian President skipped a visit to the devastated Jenin refugee camp, threatened with a hostile reception by Palestinians who say they owe their loyalty to Islamic militants and demand reforms.

Arafat went to Jenin city instead, where he spoke in the town hall.

"To Jerusalem we are headed. Jerusalem is the capital of our independent state of Palestine, never mind who agrees or does not," Arafat told a crowd in Nablus in the northern West Bank.

The White House said yesterday that US President George W. Bush would keep pushing for the creation of a Palestinian state. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke by telephone to Sharon about the issue en route to a Nato meeting in Iceland.

Sharon has spoken of the creation of a Palestinian state at the end of a long peacemaking process.

He has since said it is premature to talk of a state and has called for major reform of Arafat's Palestinian Authority as a precondition for talks.

Echoing comments he made before stalking off the stage at his party convention after the vote, Sharon told Likud legislators that he, not the party, would set peacemaking policy. "Two-thirds of the public elected me to make decisions, and I have."

The Likud vote marked a victory for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Sharon in a looming battle for the party leadership. However, Israeli political analysts said the decision by a Likud Party forum that Netanyahu packed with supporters during his 1996-1999 tenure as Prime Minister would have little or no effect on Sharon's actions.

- REUTERS

Feature: Middle East

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