OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 4 July — Israel yesterday ruled out a swift end to its military operations in the West Bank, which it said had been particularly effective in smashing the leadership of Hamas.
“We are staying in the cities,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his security Cabinet, political sources said, while right-wing minister without portfolio Effi Eitam told army radio that troops would remain in Palestinian towns for a “strategic period”, at least until the end of the year.
“It’s a success,” government spokesman Arieh Meckel told AFP, two weeks after Israeli launched Operation Determined Path — a de facto reoccupation of almost the entire West Bank. “Some people said there is no military solution and apparently there is,” Meckel said.
“They are trying to destroy the capacity of the Palestinians to resist, and it is true that they have achieved that. But without a political process we will see it re-emerge,” Palestinian political scientist Ali Jarbawi of Bir Zeit University near Ramallah said.
The Israeli security Cabinet also approved a plan yesterday to gradually end daytime curfews in seven Palestinian-ruled cities reoccupied by the Israeli Army.
“We will lift the curfew during the day so that normal life can be gradually restored,” Raanan Gissin, a Sharon adviser, told Reuters. It would be left to Israeli commanders to determine when the security situation permitted an easing of restrictions, he said.
Palestinian Cabinet member Saeb Erekat dismissed the Israeli decision as a ploy to “sustain the occupation and sustain the collective punishment of 3.3 million Palestinians”.
In Rafah, 21 people were injured when Palestinian police clashed with some 500 supporters of Hamas who stoned a police station during a tense rally, medics and witnesses said. Police fired in the air as Hamas supporters, who were demonstrating for the execution of an alleged collaborator, pelted the Rafah police station with stones and even home-made hand grenades, witnesses said. The man had reportedly been kidnapped last week by Hamas, who announced he would be put to death.
But members of President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement negotiated his surrender Tuesday to the Palestinian Authority (PA) for trial, Palestinian officials said. At least one man was arrested after shooting at the security forces, the officials added.
Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat moved to axe some of his top security officials in what was seen as a first real step in his promised shakeup of his security apparatus.
Political officials said Arafat dismissed late Tuesday three long-time stalwarts, Palestinian police chief Ghazi Jabali, West Bank preventive security chief Jibril Rajoub and civil defense chief Mahmoud Abu Marzuk, although Rajoub later denied he had been fired.
According to one official, the move against members of Arafat’s inner circle was urged by the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) new Interior Minister Gen. Abdel Razek Yehiya.
“Finally, President Arafat has answered the interior minister’s demand by dismissing them (the three) from their functions,” the official said.
Earlier yesterday, Palestinians wounded two Israeli soldiers in an attack near the Jewish settlement of Ganei Tal, inside the Gaza Strip, the army said.
