Israel to hand back West Bank towns
Israel prepared today to start handing control of West Bank towns to Palestinian police, in a huge step to ease four years of bloodshed, confrontation and tension.
With a de-facto truce holding, Israeli officials said they would pull their forces out of the towns and also take down nearby roadblocks, rolling back security measures.
The tough restrictions were imposed after violence erupted in September 2000 and intensified in 2002, when Israeli forces took over West Bank towns following a series of suicide bombings.
Transfer of control of the towns this week would be the first large-scale Israeli move on the ground to acknowledge that since Mahmoud Abbas replaced the late Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian leader earlier this month, violence had decreased significantly.
Abbas has won a commitment from militant groups to stop attacks, and Israel has scaled back its military operations in return – but no formal declarations have been made.
In another significant move, an Israeli official said Israel would grant an amnesty to West Bank fugitives, ending its relentless search for dozens of militants suspected of carrying out or planning attacks. In four years of conflict, dozens have been killed in Israeli raids and many more arrested.
The amnesty would allow Abbas to fulfil a key campaign pledge made before he won a January 9 election to replace Arafat – that fugitives would be allowed to reintegrate into Palestinian society with no fear of Israeli reprisal.
Israel has long held the right to strike at militants, though Palestinians called the operations assassinations and human rights groups condemned the practice.
In a related development, more than 100,000 settlers and their backers gathered in Jerusalem for a demonstration against Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank in the summer. The protesters demanded a referendum on the plan, but Sharon rejected that as a delaying tactic.
If the calm holds, Israel pledges to back its troops up to the positions they held before the outbreak of violence in September 2000 – in effect, turning the populated areas of the West Bank back over to Palestinian control – another major step towards resumption of long-stalled peace talks.
Abbas and Sharon are heading for their first meeting since 2003, when Abbas was prime minister.
February 8 was emerging as the date for the summit – the first between an Israeli premier and a Palestinian leader since 2000, when Arafat met then-prime minister Ehud Barak.
The new US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will arrive in the region two days before the planned summit.
Both sides appeared eager to put four years of violence behind them, but the bloodshed has left its mark on their ability to trust each other. Each side has been qualifying its declarations about peace and quiet by adding that the continuation depends on the actions of the other side.
In the meantime, though, gestures, meetings and practical steps were the order of the day.
On Saturday, Israeli defence minister Shaul Mofaz met Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Abbas aide, and told him the transfer of authority in the first of the towns would take place in the coming days.
A senior Palestinian security official said the first four towns – Ramallah, Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and Jericho – would be handed over on Wednesday.
Details of the new arrangements are to be discussed at another meeting between Mofaz and Dahlan tomorrow or Wednesday, the officials said.
Security commanders are to meet again today in what is becoming routine co-ordination – a stark contrast to months of overt hostility.
But it is clear that the atmosphere can quickly sour if there is a serious Palestinian attack or Israeli military strike.
Israel’s Channel Two TV showed video yesterday of an advanced radar tracking system being installed next to Gaza to track incoming rockets heading for Sderot, a much-battered Israeli town.
The radar is part of the US-Israeli Nautilus system, designed to intercept and destroy small rockets with laser beams. The report said the rest of the system would be installed later.
