MIDDLE EAST: Israel has withdrawn its troops to the outskirts of Jenin after the army had killed a leading Islamic Jihad militant in the northern West Bank city over the weekend, who it said was responsible for the deaths of 31 Israelis.
Yesterday's pullback came on the eve of the arrival of a US envoy who will be in the region today to promote a US-backed peace plan, but attempts to carry out suicide attacks continued unabated, with the military saying it had thwarted three planned bombings yesterday.
In one incident, a car carrying two Palestinians exploded just on the Israeli side of the border with the northern West Bank as Israeli police, whose suspicions had been aroused by the vehicle, called on the driver to halt.
Police said it was not clear to them whether the bomb, which killed both men, was detonated intentionally or by mistake. They said they suspected the two were on their way to carry out an attack. The military also arrested two more Palestinians yesterday whom it said were planning suicide attacks, one a 15-year-old boy from the West Bank city of Nablus.
The military withdrew hundreds of troops from Jenin yesterday and evacuated 50 homes it had seized and used as look-outs during its two-week operation there. The city, which has been under curfew since the troops invaded, began functioning again yesterday as children returned to school and shops reopened.
The Israeli decision to vacate Jenin came after troops on Saturday killed Iyad Sawalhe, a leading Islamic Jihad militant, whose capture was one of the main focuses of the operation there. Israel says that Sawalhe was responsible, among other things, for a bombing last month in which two Islamic Jihad activists drove an explosives-laden jeep into a bus in northern Israel and killed 14 people.
Israeli troops tracked down Sawalhe early on Saturday in a hideout built behind a revolving wall in a kitchen of a house in the casbah. While his wife surrendered to soldiers, the army said he began shooting and throwing hand grenades and that troops returned fire, killing him.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, yesterday rejected claims by right-wing politicians that Israel had pulled out of Jenin on the eve of the arrival of special US envoy Mr David Satterfield, in an attempt to placate the Americans. Mr Satterfield, who arrives today, plans to promote a peace "road map" agreed by the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, which calls for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities, an end to Palestinian attacks and the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.
The Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, convened his negotiating team at his Ramallah offices last night to formulate a response to the proposal ahead of the team's meeting with Mr Satterfield.
Palestinian officials have voiced reservations over the plan, saying the timeframe it contains is not strict enough and that it should make a clear provision for international monitors in the region.
So far, Mr Sharon has only expressed criticism of the plan behind closed doors. He was quoted as telling the weekly cabinet meeting yesterday that he has "reservations on the way the road map was presented to Israel and on its substance".
Reuters adds: Mr Arafat's Fatah faction and the Islamic militant group Hamas held talks in Cairo yesterday to iron out tensions between them as part of efforts to promote the creation of a Palestinian state. "The talks aim to unify the Palestinian front, support the intifada and overcome existing difficulties between the two parties to achieve . . . the creation of an independent Palestinian state," Egypt's official Middle East News Agency reported.