Israeli Troops

JERUSALEM -- A much-anticipated meeting between key Israeli and Palestinian officials set for tomorrow may put the deadlocked Middle East peace process back on track, but a final decision on returning land to the Palestinians won't occur immediately.First, Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon, a key opponent of a proposed withdrawal of Israeli troops from 13 percent of West Bank land, is on a 10-day trip to China.Second, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has yet to convince his backers in the nationalist, religious movement that a second withdrawal won't jeopardize the security of Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

TARQUMIYA, WEST BANK -- Israel closed its borders to Palestinians yesterday after a militant Islamic group vowed to avenge the deaths of two of its members who were killed in an Israeli raid on a farmhouse in the West Bank.The shooting deaths of brothers Adel and Imad Awadallah by Israeli soldiers sparked sporadic rioting in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as Israel stepped up security after threats by the militant Islamic group Hamas."All means will be used in order to protect our people, to defend ourselves against the Israeli aggression," Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Zahar said in the Gaza Strip.

HEBRON, West Bank -- Khalid Shahin slapped a fresh coat of green paint on the facade of his jewelry store on Hebron's main street yesterday.Like several other shopkeepers, the 29-year-old merchant expects the pullout of Israeli troops from Hebron to bring new business and a visit by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.Shahin is optimistic that the Hebron withdrawal agreement between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be carried out in the next few days and self-rule will finally come to this conservative, Palestinian Muslim town.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Cabinet approved in principle yesterday a plan to give the Palestinians more West Bank rural land to control.But the Cabinet did not set a timetable for the removal of Israeli troops from areas of the occupied territories or define its scope -- two key issues for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his people. It also made the pullouts conditional on Palestinians containing terrorism more effectively.Palestinian officials, who expect to gain control of 20 percent to 25 percent of the West Bank through the redeployment of Israeli troops, had mixed reactions.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel proposed yesterday to carry out a single Israeli troop withdrawal in the West Bank within five months, if the Palestinians take adequate steps to fight terrorism, and to start talks immediately on a final peace settlement.The offer was Netanyahu's first public response to growing pressure both from the United States to move peace efforts forward and from his right-wing coalition partners not to cede more land to the Palestinians.

JERUSALEM -- As Palestinians and Israeli troops clashed for an eighth day yesterday in the West Bank, President Clinton's Middle East envoy met with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in hopes of nudging the two into peace talks.Publicly, the Americans said one of envoy Dennis Ross' missions was to pressure Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to work firmly in cooperation with Israeli security against terror groups.But privately, according to knowledgeable diplomats, Ross was also said to have in hand a strong message from Clinton to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, requesting that Netanyahu show more flexibility in dealings with Arafat.

ALMAN, Lebanon -- Maj. Jari Piira looks out over a seemingly serene landscape of hills steeply rising from the banks of the meandering Litani River as hawks glide overhead.But this is the most active battlefield in the Middle East, a setting for more than 20 years of ambushes, invasions and rocket duels. Piira, a Finnish paratrooper, watches the carnage between Israel and Islamic militias as a member of a United Nations peacekeeping force, an "interim" peacekeeping arrangement now in its 19th discouraging year.

PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu was elected on the slogan, "Peace with security," but his policies to date have alienated peace and reduced security for Israel. He has sought to improve relations with the wider Arab world while ostentatiously putting Palestinians in their place, unilaterally applying his own interpretations to past accords and defying Palestinians to like it or lump it.Such policies as allowing Jewish settlements on the West Bank to expand or delaying redeployment of troops from Hebron or opening the long-dug tunnel behind the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem are sometimes defended as showing Palestinians (and his supporters in the Likud Party)

TYRE, Lebanon -- Another disturbing element in the story of the Qana massacre has fallen into place with the disclosure that the Israeli "patrol" which came under mortar fire from Hezbollah guerrillas on April 18 -- the incident that led to the massacre of more than 100 Lebanese refugees by Israeli shells in the United Nations camp at Qana the same day -- had been planting booby-trap bombs inside the U.N.'s area of operations.Two hours after the cease-fire which ended the 18-day Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, it now emerges, Israeli troops asked U.N. personnel to defuse a large and complex mine field that included plastic explosive charges and booby traps just outside the village of Henniyeh.

JENIN, West Bank -- Palestinian Col. Ribhi Arafat strode into a white mobile trailer yesterday to help take over the first major West Bank city from Israel.His counterpart, an Israeli soldier, offered a handshake and said: "Congratulations, you now have Jenin," Colonel Arafat said later.With that, Israel started the clock on a timetable of withdrawal that will dismantle its 28-year military occupation in Jenin within three weeks and in five other West Bank towns by the end of the year."It's a very, very important day," said the burly Palestinian officer, who spent the better part of 27 years in Algeria after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the June 1967 Six Day War. He is no relation to Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat.

JERUSALEM -The Israeli military said yesterday that it had opened an investigation into possible troop misconduct during the Gaza war after the head of a school for future recruits relayed stories of civilian killings and property destruction told by graduates during a recent gathering. The accounts were published in the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Maariv yesterday. Haaretz ran excerpts of statements by two squad commanders who told of Palestinian civilians being shot even though they did not appear to pose a threat to Israeli troops.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops stepped up attacks on Hamas fighters in the outskirts of Gaza City yesterday, as the death toll of Palestinians in recent fighting surpassed 900 and Hamas militants fired a new volley of rockets into southern Israel. On the 17th day since Israel launched its incursion into the Gaza Strip, the conflict appeared to be reaching a crucial threshold that could result in escalated combat or a negotiated resolution. In a televised statement from a hide-out presumed to be in Gaza, a top leader of the battered Hamas regime mixed defiance with language suggesting openness to diplomacy.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops and tanks thrust into the Gaza Strip's densely populated capital from three directions yesterday, drawing Hamas fighters into fierce combat in an offensive expanded by a fresh deployment of army reservists. High-rise apartments shook, and smaller, targeted buildings crumbled in Gaza City under the force of Israeli artillery shelling and missiles fired from helicopters. Plumes of black smoke rose as Hamas fighters answered with mortars, automatic rifles and grenades.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops and tanks invaded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip late yesterday after eight days of punishing airstrikes failed to halt the militant Palestinian group's rocket fire into Israel. Gunbattles could be heard from Gaza City as artillery rounds lighted the night sky. Columns of tanks and infantry, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed nearly half a mile into the territory from three directions. Israeli officials said that they expected a lengthy battle but that they did not intend to occupy Gaza.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli troops and armor backed by helicopters crossed into the Gaza Strip yesterday and clashed with Palestinian militants, killing 11, in the most recent in a series of raids into the coastal territory since it was taken over by Hamas. An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops advanced about a half-mile into central Gaza, near the Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps, to look for rocket squads and tunnels used by militants. Hamas gunmen planted explosives and fired rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli soldiers swept into the Gaza Strip yesterday, killing 13 Palestinians in the heaviest fighting since Hamas seized control of the territory early this month, the Israeli military said. In raids involving helicopters and ground forces, the troops attacked around Gaza City and near the southern town of Khan Yunis. The actions, which included searches for tunnels and explosives, were a further sign that Israel intends to isolate and weaken the militant Hamas movement while negotiating with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his more moderate Fatah party.

JERUSALEM -- At least four Palestinian gunmen using an armored vehicle and grenade launchers broke through Israel's border fence from Gaza yesterday and fought a gunbattle with Israeli soldiers, while Israeli troops entered Gaza near the southern town of Rafah to search for weapons and tunnels used to smuggle arms and explosives from Egypt. One of the Palestinian gunmen was shot dead after the armored vehicle, labeled "TV," crashed through the border fence at the old Kissufim crossing, near Deir el Balah, according to the Israeli army.

JERUSALEM -- Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, and Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, will meet next week, their offices said yesterday, in a continuation of a Washington-sponsored dialogue that will inevitably focus on another round of Israeli-Palestinian warfare. In March, they promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that they would meet every two weeks to discuss "a political horizon" for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. They had met only once, on April 15, before a fierce new round of intra-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip segued into a new barrage of rockets from Gaza into Israel, joined this time by Hamas, which has drawn the Israeli military into a new round of airstrikes.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinian militants during a raid yesterday in the West Bank town of Jenin and also entered Nablus for the second time this week. In Jenin, undercover Israeli forces moved to arrest two Islamic Jihad members allegedly involved in a foiled suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last week, Israeli officials said. The troops shot back after being fired upon, killing the suspects and a man with them, officials said. The dead were identified as Ashraf Saadi, 29, suspected of involvement in numerous shootings and bombings, and Mohammed Abu Naasah, 34, an Islamic Jihad commander in the Jenin refugee camp.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israeli troops staged a rare incursion into this city yesterday, bulldozing cars and vegetable stands near the central square as they engaged gunmen and stone-throwing residents in a chaotic two-hour battle that left four Palestinians dead. The raid, aimed at rescuing a team of undercover Israeli agents, was a diplomatic embarrassment for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as he headed to Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak on how to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.