Israel kills Islamic Jihad militant in shootout

By Wael al-Ahmed

JENIN, West Bank, Oct 30 – Israeli troops killed an Islamic
Jihad militant in a shootout in the West Bank on Sunday, hours
after the faction agreed to halt rocket fire from the Gaza
Strip, Palestinian security sources said.

A week of violence has badly damaged a nearly
nine-month-old truce and hopes that Israel’s withdrawal from
the occupied Gaza Strip in September could energize peacemaking
in the Middle East.

A gunbattle erupted at sunset when Israeli troops
surrounded the hideout of an Islamic Jihad militant in
Qabatiya, the West Bank home town of the Jihad suicide bomber
who killed five Israelis in a market place on Wednesday.

Palestinian security sources said one gunman had been shot
dead. Militants battled troops nearby and Israeli helicopters
sent down bursts of gunfire.

The fighting in the West Bank followed a day of unusual
quiet around the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian officials said Islamic Jihad had agreed to halt
cross-border rocket attacks as long as there were no Israeli
raids. Israel had decided to stop air raids launched in
response to the rockets, they said.

Airstrikes killed nine Palestinians, most of them
militants, since Thursday.

Khaled al-Batsh, a leader for Islamic Jihad in Gaza said,
“if the enemy stops its attacks, our commitment to calm will be
maintained.” There was no immediate word on whether this
position had changed after the West Bank violence.

FIGHTING

Israeli officials said that if rocket fire from Gaza
stopped then raids there would stop too, but that operations
against Islamic Jihad would continue following the suicide
bombing in the city of Hadera.

“There is an intent to continue it until they cannot carry
out any more suicide bombings,” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz
told the cabinet.

Islamic Jihad began the latest round of rocket fire from
Gaza and carried out the suicide attack following Israel’s
killing of one of its top commanders in the West Bank a week
ago.

Islamic Jihad, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, did
not say that it would halt suicide bombings as part of a
renewed commitment to the truce.

The United States had appealed to Israel for caution in its
assaults on militants, while also urging Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas to take action to rein in the armed groups waging
an uprising since 2000.

Palestinians are meant to start disarming the factions
under a U.S.-backed “road map,” but Abbas has said that to use
force could risk civil war. Israel has not met its own road map
commitment to freeze West Bank settlement building.

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Youssef said on
Saturday his forces would confiscate guns on the streets and
“deal firmly” with workshops making weapons or explosives.
There was no immediate sign of action.