RAMALLAH, 23 August — Palestinian officials said yesterday that Israel had failed to fulfill an agreement between the two sides about a withdrawal from the reoccupied autonomous city of Bethlehem and areas in the Gaza Strip.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, said talks with Israeli representatives on the agreement were “dragging on” and were once again postponed until next Monday.

In the understanding reached Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer agreed to a gradual pullout from autonomous areas where calm prevailed, starting with Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority for its part committed to take over security in those areas.

Bethlehem Governor Mohammed Al-Madani announced Monday that Israeli troops had withdrawn from the southern West Bank city, but Arafat’s security adviser, Mohammed Dahlan, said yesterday Israel had not carried out any of the promised measures in the Gaza Strip.

“Nothing has been done in the Gaza Strip for a number of reasons and I don’t expect anything to be done by the Israeli side,” he said.

“The Israeli defense minister wants progress, but pressure is being applied on him by field commanders, or Sharon’s office or parties in Israel which want to stop him from implementing the understandings,” he told Israel Radio.

In other developments, a bomb exploded yesterday at a farm in Saida near Tulkarm killing a Palestinian woman and wounding her son. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli troops arrested a regional Hamas leader, Mohammed Wajeh Quoa, 41.

Quoa had been arrested repeatedly by Israel in the past and in 1992 was deported to south Lebanon for one year, along with 400 other activists.

In New York, a top UN official said yesterday the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories has caused widespread economic hardship, but the solution is a political rather than a financial one.

“This is not in any way a traditional humanitarian crisis,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s personal humanitarian envoy, Catherine Bertini, said. “It is a crisis created by a lack of access, and that is the access that individual people have to goods and services,” she told a news conference.

In Gaza, Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razaq Al-Yahya met representatives of 13 Palestinian groups yesterday to discuss Israel’s plan to ease the military clampdown in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Yahya and the 13 groups were tight-lipped about the outcome of the meeting. A spokesman for the groups said before the meeting they would repeat their opposition to the plan.

In another development, former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek said yesterday Israel must give the Palestinians control over parts of the city, including Muslim holy sites, to help bring peace to the Middle East.

Kollek, who governed for 27 years, weighed in on the volatile issue of the city’s status a day after Israel said it had arrested four East Jerusalem Arabs accused of mounting attacks that killed 35 people, including five Americans. Israel’s interior minister said he had begun steps to revoke the residency status of the four East Jerusalem Arabs.

Kollek, 91, who worked for reconciliation between Jews and Arabs during his tenure that ended in 1993, said Israelis would have to make concessions on Jerusalem if it wanted peace. “I think that we have to reach a deal. As part of the arrangement, something must be given to them (the Arabs),” the former politician told Israel’s Army Radio.

In Paris, an international task force which hopes to promote Middle East peace through Palestinian reforms met yesterday for two days of talks with Palestinian officials. The reforms are deemed crucial to reviving peace talks with Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel’s National Security Council has recommended that the country’s borders with a Palestinian entity be determined quickly — with or without Palestinian input in peace talks — to improve the security situation. The report called for the establishment of a defensible border as soon as possible.