Palestine Liberation Organisation political commissioner for Jerusalem Mr Sari Nusseibeh has resigned from his post, his office said today.
Officials in his bureau gave no immediate reason for the resignation, but Mr Nusseibeh, a moderate intellectual, has been heavily cricticised for his frequent and outspoken calls for a complete re-examination of the stalled peace process.
He has been criticised in particular for his demand that the Palestinians drop their traditional insistence on the right of millions of refugees and their descendents to return to the homes they fled in Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948.
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Palestinians survey the damge after the Israeli raid on their village Photo: Reuters
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In the West Bank earlier the Israeli army raided a Palestinian-ruled town, killing one Palestinian and arresting two suspected militants, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
A Palestinian security official said a member of the Palestinian security forces was shot dead as he fled a checkpoint during the pre-dawn raid in Halhoul, north of the city of Hebron.
The Israeli army, which called its raid an "anti-terrorist operation," said it killed a gunman after he opened fire.
The army said it arrested a militant linked to Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and another from the group Islamic Jihad. It said they had been involved in smuggling arms and in deadly shooting attacks against Israelis.
The raid in the town of Halhoul followed Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip yesterday in retaliation for what the army said was the Palestinians' use of a new rocket.
The US criticised those Israeli reprisals but also denounced the Palestinian militant group Hamas for the cross-border rocket attack.
In a separate West Bank raid overnight, the army said it arrested 10 Palestinians in an area under Israeli security control near the Palestinian-ruled city of Ramallah. Some of the detainees were suspected of criminal activity, the army said.
AFP and