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NABLUS, Dec 20: A rare calm in the Palestinian territories was shattered on Thursday when a Palestinian was killed in a firefight with Israeli forces on Thursday as they moved back into a suburb of Nablus they had quit just hours earlier, Palestinian officials said.
Tanks and armoured cars moved into an autonomous Palestinian area of west Nablus they had quit in the morning, although the army said the movement had been a “tactical change” and not an official withdrawal.
Tanks also returned to a West Bank village evacuated hours earlier.
The withdrawal had been seen as a sign that the security situation had improved slightly after a dramatic drop in violence following Yasser Arafat’s peace call on Sunday.
But the clashes and the killing — the first since Monday — ruptured the peace.
11 ARRESTED: Israeli forces arrested 11 Palestinians in raids early on Thursday on Palestinian self-rule towns and villages in the West Bank, an Israeli army spokesman said, even as he confirmed the withdrawal from two other villages and the city of Nablus.
Six Palestinians were arrested in the village of Karut Ben Yazid, northwest of Ramallah. One of them, Abed El Hadi Salah Harar, is a member of the radical Islamic movement Hamas, the army said. Palestinian officials the raid was unopposed and without incident.
In Al Khalil, to the south of occupied Al Quds, Israeli forces netted Zad Nasser Adin, a member of Islamic Jihad, the smaller counterpart of Hamas.—AFP
