Israeli troops to withdraw from Qalqilya

JERUSALEM, NOV. 4. Israeli troops will withdraw today from Qalqilya, one of the five Palestinian towns in the West Bank they have partly re-occupied since the assassination of a Cabinet Minister on October 17, the Defence Minister, Mr. Binyamin Ben Eliezer said.

The Minister was quoted by military radio as telling a weekly Cabinet meeting that he was also in favour of withdrawing from the four other self-rule cities, Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Jenin, but did not fix a date. Mr. Ben Eliezer stressed that the intervention in the Qalqilya area would be terminated ``because the operation started the day after the murder of an Israeli Minister by a radical Palestinian group has proved effective.'' He added on public radio that it was time for a ``gradual pull- out'' to take place.

Earlier in the day, the Foreign Minister, Mr. Shimon Peres, said the Israeli army could withdraw ``town-by-town'' from the partly reoccupied Palestinian West Bank areas if calm prevails and extremists are jailed. ``We are ready for a town-by- town withdrawal within a week if the Palestinian Authority arrests the provocateurs and the main terrorists who run free in these towns, and takes on responsibility for maintaining the peace,'' he said on public radio.

Israeli tanks and infantry stormed into six towns on October 18 after an extremist Palestinian group assassinated the Tourism Minister, Rehavam Zeevi. Mr. Peres said the stipulated conditions had already been met in Bethlehem and neighbouring Beit Jala, to the south of Jerusalem, allowing the army to pull out last week, while there had been no interventions in Hebron and Jericho. He stressed that Israel ``will be satisfied if we can do the same thing in the five other towns'', reiterating that Israel had no intention of staying in Palestinian self-rule areas. - AFP

Arafat may meet Bush

Reuters reports from Jerusalem:

The Palestinian President, Mr. Yasser Arafat might meet the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly later this month, a senior Palestinian Minister said today.

Meanwhile a Palestinian gunman today fired at an Israeli bus while it was travelling in northern Jerusalem, wounding as many as seven people, police and witnesses said. ``We saw a Palestinian terrorist shoot at us from the outside. He didn't stop shooting,'' a woman passenger on the bus told Israel radio. The bus was travelling in Jerusalem's French hill neighbourhood.

The Jerusalem police chief, Mr. Mickey Levy said there were ``many wounded''. An Israel radio reporter said he saw several injured people lying on the sidewalk near the site of the attack.

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Section  : International
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