December 27, 2001	Thursday	Shawwal 11, 1422

TEL AVIV, Dec 26: An Israeli soldier and two Arab gunmen were killed in intense clashes on the Jordan border on Tuesday, but the flare-up of violence did not stop a senior Islamic Jihad official announcing his group was signing up to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s ceasefire call.

And Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said his troops would be lifting the suffocating blockade of Jericho in the West Bank overnight as calm had prevailed for a “long enough period.”

In a further encouraging sign, the Palestinian leadership voted to continue high-level talks with Israel despite the Jewish state declaring Arafat “confined to quarters” in Ramallah until he rids the West Bank town of “terrorists.”

The outbreak of violence on the normally calm border with Jordan also left four Israeli soldiers injured, two of them in serious condition, the army said in a statement.

It said a routine patrol in the area, where Israeli farmers also lease land on the Jordanian side of the border, was ambushed on the Israeli side of the border, leaving two soldiers wounded.

It said the fire came from within Israel. Military sources had earlier said the fire could have come from within Jordan, although Amman denied the claim. The Israeli army said all its operations were carried out inside Israel.

When the army launched a search for the attackers, they again came under fire, and a soldier was killed, an officer wounded and another soldier slightly hurt.

Israeli helicopters later prowled the area, trying to flush out the gunmen with machinegun fire. In a later search by Israeli and Jordanian troops, the bodies of two “armed terrorists” were found, the army said. Despite the shooting, the defence ministry announced the lifting of the blockade near Jericho, also close to the border with Jordan, the only other Arab state except Egypt to have reached a peace deal with Israel.

The ministry said the area had remained calm long enough for the stifling closure to be lifted, in an encouraging sign after weeks of escalating bloodshed that has dropped on dramatically since Arafat called for an end to attacks on Israel.

That strongly-worded appeal bore further fruit on Tuesday when a senior Islamic Jihad official said the militant group was following the example of Hamas and stopping all attacks on Israel, after stormy internal debate.

Nafez Azzam, a leader from the Gaza town of Rafah, said the decision was taken “in line with Palestinian unity, which stipulates the end of military operations against Israel.”

The group “wants to take care to maintain unity in the Palestinian ranks and that, for this reason, we cannot become a point of tension on the Palestinian stage,” he said.

He said the decision was taken “in order not to give Israel the pretext to intensify its pressures on the Palestinians and on the Palestinian Authority.”

Israel said the declarations were “encouraging” but said Arafat’s Palestinian Authority must dismantle both the “terrorist organizations” of Hamas and Jihad.

“This is encouraging but the point if to have proof on the ground. We deal with the Palestinian Authority and not Hamas or Islamic Jihad. If they really stop then it’s encouraging but they must be slowly dismantled,” said government spokesman Raanan Gissin.

He said the groups had only made the move because they were under pressure from the Palestinian authorities and had made no “strategic decision to discard terrorism.”

Gissin also said Arafat, who missed his traditional midnight mass in Bethlehem due to Israel’s refusal to let him leave Ramallah, is “restricted until he takes action against terrorists.”

“It started before Christmas and will go on afterwards,” he said.

“We don’t want to humiliate him or harm him. But he’ll remain confined to quarters, confined to Ramallah, until either he or other people do the job. We’re not asking him to do anything he hasn’t promised to do.”

Gissin said Israel had given him the names of the two trigger- men from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who assassinated a cabinet minister in October, and said it will not back down until they are arrested.

Israel is also demanding the arrest of the PFLP’s political leader Ahmed Saadat and his deputy. Israel said all the suspects were living in Ramallah, within a kilometre (half a mile) radius of Arafat’s West Bank headquarters.

The ban on Arafat’s Christmas visit was slammed by the Vatican as “arbitrary,” while France said its stained the government’s image. It was also slammed in the Israeli press as a “stupid decision.”—AFP