Israeli troops withdrew from the autonomous Palestinian town of Beit Jala in the West Bank at dawn Thursday. However, Radio Israel reported that Palestinian resistance fighters were continuing to fire at the Jewish settlement of Gilo, with no casualties reported.
Tanks, jeeps and armoured personnel carriers took the Israeli troops swiftly out of the little town, key areas of which they had occupied for some 50 hours, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.
Colonel Farouk Amin of the Palestinian liaison office in the sector confirmed the report of the troop withdrawal, whose occupation had drawn strong criticism from abroad.
According to Haaretz, the decision to withdraw was taken at a three-hour meeting of the security cabinet, where it was decided that if the shooting at Gilo resumed then the army would not only go back into Beit Jala, but would expand its hold there. The withdrawal began at around 4:00am, it said.
Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem were quoted by Radio Israel as saying that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had given a pledge to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the United States that he would stop the shooting at Gilo.
However, Palestinian Authority Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said that if the ceasefire in the Beit Jala area held, then the chances of a meeting between Arafat and Peres would increase, and possibly the ceasefire could be expanded to other areas of the Occupied Territories.
He warned against a harsh Israeli response to the possibility of one or two bullets still being fired at Gilo. "We did our best in order to bring about a ceasefire," said Abed Rabbo. "If there is a bullet here or a bullet there, there might be one person who will try to undermine (the ceasefire), but this does not permit the Israelis to respond with shelling, with attacking Palestinian residential areas."
But senior Israeli defense sources suggested that Arafat's decision to agree to a ceasefire was only short-term. The sources added their claim that Arafat had not abandoned his decision to use violence in an effort to make diplomatic gains, according to the daily.
Besides Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer and Peres, four other ministers - Silvan Shalom, Dan Meridor, Eli Yishai and Natan Sharansky - also participated in the security cabinet meeting.
The US State Department expressed the hope that if the truce between Beit Jala and Gilo held, it could become a springboard to a wider accord and a possible start toward "peacemaking."
An Israeli military spokesman said earlier that no Palestinian attacks had been launched during the night, the key condition for an Israeli withdrawal from the positions they had seized overnight Monday.
However, Israeli public radio warned that army units posted at the entrance to Beit Jala remained at the ready to return should Palestinian gunfire in the area resume, according to AFP.
After the meeting, Sharon telephoned US Secretary of State Colin Powell to inform him of the decision, a political source told the agency.
The United States had been strongly critical of the Israeli incursion into Palestinian autonomous territory.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday that Washington opposed Israeli incursions into Palestinian territories, particularly if they appeared to be open-ended or permanent.
"There is a fundamental issue here and that's trying to reverse agreements and understandings that have been made in the past," he told reporters in Washington.
Meanwhile, a serious gun battle broke out Wednesday night in Hebron, another volatile section of the West Bank, leaving dead a member of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 guards unit and 15 other Palestinians wounded.
Abud Dabassi, 32, died of his wounds at Ahli Hospital in Hebron, Palestinian sources said.
An Israeli army spokesman told AFP that the fighting began after Palestinian forces shot at Israeli positions in the center of Hebron, where a tiny "settlement" of Israelis is maintained in amidst the city's tens of thousands of Palestinian residents.
AFP said Wednesday that no sooner was the truce announced than shooting resumed, with bullets hitting Gilo, whose protection was the main aim of the Israeli incursion.
But Palestinian security officials said the exchanges of fire, to which the Israelis responded with tank shells, started when their fighters shot in the air in celebration at hearing the news of the truce.
The Israelis heard the shooting and fired back, they said.
Fateh leader in the West Bank Marwan Barghouthi told Abu Dhabi satellite TV Wednesday night that there had been no truce: “only suggestions and ideas” that did not materialize as the Israelis were shelling Ramallah and Bethlehem.
And Israel forces also made a brief incursion in the Palestinian refugee camp of Al Jalazun north of the West Bank town of Ramallah late Wednesday, witnesses said.
Earlier Wednesday, four Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West bank and the Gaza Strip.
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 578 Palestinians, and 155 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 15,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September – Albawaba.com
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