RAMALLAH, July 11: The Israeli army captured a commander of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s elite Force 17 guard unit in an overnight raid in the West Bank, Palestinian security officials said on Thursday.
Colonel Abdelrahim al Nubani, the head of Force 17’s security service, was seized in the village of Nubani, around 20 kms north of Ramallah, in an operation shortly after 2:00 am (2300 GMT Wednesday), the officials said.
An elite Israeli unit backed by two armoured personnel carriers swooped on the village, they said.
Israeli military sources, quoted by the public radio, confirmed the arrest.
Palestinian security sources said earlier that 13 people had been arrested in the night in operations across the West Bank, which has been almost entirely occupied by the Israeli army for three weeks.
They included six members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, three from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and two from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the sources said.
These 11 were arrested at Assirah Ash Shamaliya near the northern city of Nablus, while two more, whose affiliation was not given, were taken prisoner in the nearby village of Taluza.
An Israeli military spokesman, who only spoke of 10 arrests, said the suspects were wanted in connection with armed attacks against soldiers or Jewish settlers in the West Bank, or planned attacks in Israel.
MILITANTS’ CONDITION: Three Palestinian militant groups have said they will end attacks on Israeli civilians if Israel stops killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, the human rights organization Amnesty International said on Thursday.
Amnesty’s Deputy Chief in the Middle East Abdel Sallam Sayyed Ahmed said the group obtained the commitment after meeting separately with leaders of three Palestinian militant groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad (Holy War) and the Popular Front to Liberate Palestine (PFLP).
Ahmed said Amnesty met the three groups to convince them to stop suicide bombing attacks and to brief them on an Amnesty report condemning suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians.
“We told them that it is their right to resist, but resistance would never give them the right to target civilians. I was told that they are not in favour of killing civilians, but their attacks come as a reaction to Israel killing Palestinian civilians,” he said.
Ahmed said the groups tried to excuse the attacks by saying Israel has no civilians, that Israel is a community of militants who all serve in the army.
Leaders of the groups said they would welcome an agreement to avoid killing civilians on both sides, similar to the agreement made between Hezbollah and Israeli in southern Lebanon in 1994.
FRENCH GROUPS CALL: An association of 30 French groups camapigning for peace in the Middle East launched a call Thursday for consumers to boycott Israeli goods in protest against the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank.
“We call on the public to no longer buy Israeli products as long as the occupation by Israel of the Palestinian territories continues,” the president of the Coordination for Calls for a Fair Peace in the Middle East (CAPJPO), Olivia Zemor, told a media conference in Paris.
Israel “is practising a virtual apartheid on the Palestinian population,” she said.
Representatives of some of the groups, including the Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan, were present.
The boycott comes three months after the European parliament suspended an economic association agreement with Israel because of its violations of international law.
Israel exports more than 100 million euros (dollars) of farm products to France, an expert at the media conference said.—Agencies