Israeli tanks withdraw from West Bank town
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, was today in talks with security chiefs after his tanks were forced out of a Palestinian West Bank town by heavy resistance.
The Israeli army briefly entered Nablus early today and surrounded Joseph’s Tomb, a Jewish religious site. Palestinians said the troops came under heavy fire and withdrew after less than two hours.
At least 20 tanks entered the city, and soldiers declared a curfew in the area, ordering Palestinians to stay in their houses during the operation, witnesses said.
The Israeli military said the move followed ‘‘many attacks originating from the Nablus area’’ and was aimed at stopping Palestinian terrorism.
The army said the operation was concentrated around the Balata refugee camp, a well known concentration of gunmen and militants.
The operation was the second in the town in as many days. Yesterday, Israeli tanks, soldiers and armoured personnel carriers entered another part of Nablus, seizing an apartment building.
Also yesterday, Israeli warplanes and helicopters pounded Palestinian buildings in the Gaza Strip after Palestinians fired rockets at Israel. The Israelis also hit a UN building.
The air strikes followed an attack in Beersheba, in southern Israel. Two Palestinians opened fire at the entrance to an Israeli army base, killing two female soldiers, reportedly as they ate lunch.
Sharon returned home from Washington, where he told US President George Bush that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is responsible for the violence.
Palestinians claim Israel is to blame because of its policies of harsh restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza and its repeated operations aimed at killing suspected militants.
Israel abandoned Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus on October 7, 2000 after a pitched battle in which six Palestinians and an Israeli border policeman were killed. The site, believed by many Jews to be the burial place of the biblical Joseph but claimed by Palestinians as the tomb of an Arab sheik, is inside the West Bank’s largest Palestinian town and can be reached only through a crowded Arab neighbourhood.
Hard-line Israelis have been calling for their government to retake the site ever since it was evacuated. But military sources said the army had no intention of recapturing the site today.
