October 27, 2002	Sunday	Sha’aban 20,1423

TEL AVIV, Oct 26: Israel tightened its grip on Jenin on Saturday, scouring the battered West Bank city for Palestinian militants as a US peace mission ended indecisively.

Palestinian witnesses said the Israeli army detained 11 people in Jenin. The army said it took six Palestinians into custody in and near the city.

Hundreds of troops backed by heavy armour rolled into Jenin on Friday, commandeering buildings, searching homes and imposing curfews. The army drew fire from Palestinians and also on the diplomatic front from the European Union, which urged restraint.

Israeli military chiefs said the Jenin operation — dubbed “Vanguard” — would last as long as necessary.

Palestinian medics said six people were seriously wounded in clashes with the army — violence which overshadowed the end of a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories by US envoy William Burns.

Burns had come to the region with a “roadmap” for peace based on a Middle East policy speech in June by President George Bush, who has been seeking to lower Israeli-Palestinian tensions ahead of possible war on Iraq.

The US plan calls for an end to violence and for Palestinian administrative reforms and Israeli army withdrawals from occupied cities, leading to a final settlement and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 2005.

Israeli leaders said the plan — drafted by a “quartet” of mediators from the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations — lacked security guarantees. The Palestinians said it needed timetables and enforcement mechanisms.

Israeli Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar, describing the plan as a draft proposal, told Israel Radio it “deviated in some parts from the outline of the president’s speech”.

Saar, who did not elaborate on the points of contention, said Israel had made its reservations known to Burns and would send Washington a written response to the proposal.

Israel initially held back retaliation for Monday’s bombing, carried out by two Jenin teenagers belonging to the Islamic Jihad, who slammed an explosives-packed car into a bus in northern Israel.

There were no apologies after the army incursion on Friday.

“Jenin has become the capital of terror,” Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said. “When I speak of men and women suicide bombers, this is where they come from.”

Palestinian censure soon followed. Nabil Abu Rdainah, adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, said Israel had “sabotaged US efforts regarding the roadmap plan”.

The Jenin assault was one of the biggest operations in the West Bank since Israeli forces reoccupied most of its cities in June after suicide bombings killed 26 people in Israel.

The Arab League slammed the incursion, saying it could hamper peace efforts to end the conflict.

Arab League spokesman Hesham Youssef said in a statement that the latest offensive was a “reminder of a humanitarian catastrophe which took place in this camp a few months ago when Israeli forces stormed into Jenin and committed the most horrible crimes against its inhabitants”.

Jenin was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in a crushing Israeli offensive in the West Bank in April after 29 people were killing in a suicide bombing during a Passover holiday meal in an Israeli hotel.—Reuters