Arab News

GAZA, 30 June 2003 — Palestinian groups Hamas Islamic Jihad and Fatah declared a three-month cease-fire with Israel yesterday, a move which Israel immediately dismissed.

Israeli Foreign Ministry deputy director-general Gideon Meir said the Palestinian groups’ plan was simply to regroup.

“I will repeat what Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said two hours ago to US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice — this cease-fire is a ticking bomb because it actually maintains the infrastructure of terror,” Meir told Reuters.

In another development, Israel and the Palestinian authorities reached an agreement yesterday on troop withdrawal.

Under the withdrawal plan, Israel will cease lightning incursions and dismantle military checkpoints, which have paralyzed Palestinians’ life in Gaza, in return for Palestinian authorities taking security responsibility and cracking down on hard-line groups, the security sources said.

Palestinian security sources and witnesses said Israeli troops had started their withdrawal last evening from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun as part of the security deal.

Meanwhile, a statement from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the groups that led a 33-month-old revolt against occupation, said they had “suspended military operations against the Zionist enemy” and would stick to the deal if Israel fulfilled a number of conditions. “(These include) the total cessation of all forms of Zionist aggression against our people, of incursions, demolitions, closures, sieges on cities, villages and refugee camps, including the siege imposed on (Palestinian) President Yasser Arafat, the bulldozing of agricultural land, attacks on land and property... the total cessation of all assassination operations, massacres and of all arrest and deportation campaigns against our people, their leaders and their fighters.”

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction also issued a statement declaring an immediate suspension of anti-Israeli attacks.

Condoleeza Rice, who met Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank on Saturday, held talks yesterday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. She has avoided comment on her trip.

In the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya, two Palestinians were wounded, one of them critically, when clashes broke out between armed Palestinians and Israeli troops yesterday, Palestinian security sources said. Mohammad Oweiss, 22, was in critical condition after being shot in the chest, the sources said.

In Ramallah, Israeli troops arrested the leader of a pro-Iraqi Palestinian faction, witnesses said.

Wafel Yusef, the leader in the occupied territories of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), was captured by Israeli troops as he was driving his car in the town of El-Bireh, witnesses said.

The movement, which broke away from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in the 1970s, confirmed the arrest of its leader, who sits in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central council.