- TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters)
- Palestinian militants said on Sunday they killed a Palestinian woman
in the West Bank city of Tulkarm who they accused of helping Israeli security
forces track and kill a member of their group.
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- The first woman to be killed by militants as a "collaborator"
in the 23-month long uprising against Israeli occupation was wrenched from
her home and shot several times in the head and chest in a square in Tulkarm,
Palestinian and hospital sources said.
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- The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked
to President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction and on a list of groups the
United States considers to be terrorists, said in a phone call to Reuters
it shot the woman on Saturday evening.
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- Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli forces on Sunday
raided the town of Salfit and arrested at least six suspected Palestinian
militants in an operation that lasted several hours.
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- The raid followed an apparent stalemate on an agreement
to ease Israel's military clampdown in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in
return for a reduction in violence.
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- The so-called "Gaza-Bethlehem First" arrangement,
in which Israel pulled forces out of Bethlehem last week, was viewed as
a test for a wider truce and withdrawal from six other West Bank cities
reoccupied after suicide bombings in Israel in June.
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- But a pledge to ease restrictions on Palestinian travel
in the Gaza Strip has yet to be carried out and Israeli officials poured
cold water on the prospect that a new withdrawal from the divided city
of Hebron was in store in the near future.
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- HEAVY RESPONSIBILITY
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- A spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem
said the Tulkarm killing was a "clear human rights violation like
any incident of execution or murder."
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- "If it is true that she was a collaborator, the
Israeli forces that recruited her have a heavy responsibility for what
happened since they endangered her life."
-
- There was no immediate comment from Palestinian or Israeli
officials.
-
- Palestinian officials said that Israel had effectively
frozen the Gaza-Bethlehem deal after talks for a Hebron pullout foundered
over the weekend. Some 400 Israeli settlers live in several small enclaves
in the West Bank city of about 150,000 Palestinian residents.
-
- A withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Hebron would only
be from Palestinian-ruled parts of the city. Israeli forces would remain
in and around Jewish areas.
-
- "The Israeli side has no intention to withdraw from
the West Bank and Gaza. Therefore there won't be any progress," said
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a top adviser to Arafat.
-
- Israel's Defense Ministry denied the charge on Sunday,
saying talks on further measures to ease crippling curfews and closures
on Palestinian areas would resume this week.
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- But Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said
any new pullout depended on an extended period of calm, especially in Gaza
where violence between the sides has yet to abate.
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- "First of all, we must deepen the effort (to halt
violence) in Gaza and Bethlehem. It is pointless to move forward...unless
there is quiet and the warnings (of new attacks) have stopped,"
-
- "In Hebron there are still many warnings...We want
to go about this process step by step...and not to jump beyond their capabilities,"
he said, referring to Palestinian security forces charged with maintaining
order where Israel has pulled out.
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- MILITANTS NOT CONVINCED
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- The arrangement has also been challenged from the start
by militant groups who reject renewed dialogue with Israel and have vowed
to keep up attacks, despite an appeal by Palestinian Interior Minister
Abdel Razzak al-Yahya to representatives of Palestinian national and Islamic
factions.
-
- "I made clear to all that this agreement is merely
the first step toward ending the Israeli occupation and siege imposed on
our cities" to pave the way for Palestinian leadership elections next
year and renewed Middle East peacemaking, Yahya said in a statement issued
on Sunday.
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- "I asserted the need to reassess and revise accordingly
the strategy of resistance and to review its presently adopted forms,"
he said of his talks with the factions last week.
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- The United States has made new elections and reform of
the Palestinian security services and financial institutions a condition
for progress on establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
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- At least 1,510 Palestinians and 589 Israelis have been
killed since the start of the revolt in September 2000 after talks on establishing
a Palestinian state stalled.
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