BEIT HANOUN, (Gaza Strip), May 20: Israel, acting despite a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, relaxed its military grip on Tuesday from a Gaza Strip area where first steps could be taken in a U.S.-backed peace plan.

Witnesses said the Israeli army pulled out of Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza town occupied on last Thursday.

The town is in a border area that Israel said it wanted to hand over to Palestinian security control as a proving ground for new prime minister Mahmoud Abbas’s commitment to the peace “road map” and its call to disarm and arrest gunmen.

But talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday ended without any agreement on implementing the peace plan and its series of reciprocal confidence-building steps leading to Palestinian statehood in 2005.

Palestinian militants from the West Bank have carried out five suicide bombings against Israelis in three days, the latest an attack on a shopping mall in northern Israel on Monday that killed three people.

Militant groups leading a 31-month-old uprising for independence have described the bombings as their response to the new peace efforts. The attacks prompted renewed Israeli threats to expel Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, accused by Israel of fomenting violence — an allegation he denies.

“We are convinced that first and foremost Arafat is the factor preventing this process from taking off,” Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Monday after a suicide bomber blew herself up at the entrance to the mall in the town of Afula.

Mofaz told a security symposium Israel would consider expelling Arafat if he stymied Abbas’s professed intention to rein in militants and implement reforms for peace.—Reuters