Israel cuts some contacts, begins W.Bank clampdown
By Matt Spetalnick
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel suspended all security
contacts with the Palestinians and began sealing off biblical
Bethlehem in a West Bank clampdown on Monday after gunmen
killed three settlers in the deadliest attack on Israelis in
months.
The flare-up on Sunday in the occupied West Bank, including
Israel’s killing of a senior Islamic militant, came a month
after the Jewish state completed its pullout from the Gaza
Strip to end 38 years of military rule.
The latest fighting raised new doubts about an already
shaky eight-month-old ceasefire and undermined hopes the Gaza
pullout would spur renewed peacemaking.
Despite that, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas planned
to go ahead with talks with U.S. President George W. Bush this
week on how to resuscitate a “road map” peace plan, an aide
said.
Demanding a Palestinian crackdown on militants, Israel said
it was suspending all security contacts with the Palestinian
Authority, which had been expanded in recent months with
coordination of the pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel told
the Palestinian Authority the freeze applied to diplomatic
contacts as well. Israel’s Foreign Ministry denied this.
Israeli forces erected roadblocks at entrances to the West
Bank town of Bethlehem, an area under Palestinian security
control from which Sunday’s attackers were thought to have
come.
Troops also closed the main entrance to the neighboring
West Bank city of Hebron and imposed closures near Ramallah.
Rolling back an easing of restrictions gradually
implemented since a February ceasefire took effect, Palestinian
cars were banned from certain roads in the West Bank.
The army also arrested 19 suspected militants in raids in
the territory, where troops have kept most major towns and
cities encircled during a five-year-old Palestinian uprising.
“As a result of yesterday’s attacks we are taking defensive
action on the ground to prevent future occurrences,” Foreign
Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. “There is also a temporary
suspension of contacts between the Defense Ministry and
military personnel and Palestinian counterparts.”
Erekat said the clampdown would only make matters worse.
“It is very unfortunate because we should not allow such
incidents to deter and undermine the peace process,” he told
Reuters.
SHIFTING FOCUS
Analysts had predicted militants would shift focus to the
West Bank following Israel’s removal of all 8,500 settlers from
Gaza. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vowed never to cede major
settlement blocs in the West Bank, where 245,000 settlers live.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group in Abbas’ ruling
Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the shootings outside
the Gush Etzion settlement bloc and Eli settlement, saying it
was avenging Israel’s killing of militants.
Three settlers died in the Gush Etzion attack, and two were
wounded in the second ambush.
In northern West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead an Islamic
Jihad militant commander after he opened fire on them,
Palestinian witnesses and Israeli military sources said.
The ambushes could embarrass Abbas just before his talks
with Bush at the White House on Thursday. Abbas has been under
U.S. and Israeli pressure to rein in and disarm militants.
Sunday’s attack was the deadliest for Israelis since July,
when a suicide bomber killed five people in an Israeli town.
It was the worst single day of violence since August 24
when five Palestinians were killed in a West Bank raid by
Israeli troops and a British Jew was stabbed to death by a
Palestinian.
Palestinian officials denounced Sunday’s roadside shootings
but also condemned the killing of the militant leader.
Militants entered into a truce earlier this year at Abbas’s
behest. The deal has greatly reduced but not halted violence.
Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank, captured by
Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, for a future state.
(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem, Wafa
Amr in Ramallah and Saed Ayyad in Bethlehem)