A Hamas leader in Nablus, Ahmad Marshoud, was assassinated Monday morning by an Israeli missile launched at his office at the PA Ministry of Prisoner affairs, a Hamas leader in Gaza told Albawaba.com.
Mahoud Al Zahhar said that Marshoud had been in Israeli prisons for nine years.
However, AFP quoted Palestinian security sources as saying the activist was killed in a booby-trapped car.
Marshoud is the second Hamas activist to be killed by Israel in two days.
On Sunday, Israeli army sharpshooters killed another activist of the Palestinian Islamic movement in the West Bank town of Qalqilya.
Abdul Rahman Hamad, 35, was on the roof of his home a few hundred meters (yards) from the Green Line separating the West Bank from Israel when he was shot several times in the head, reported AFP.
Israel security officials confirmed that Israel was responsible for the killing of “a senior member of the Hamas military wing,” claiming that he was involved in the planning of the suicide bomb attack at the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv on June 1, in which 22 people, most of them teenagers, were killed, according to Haaretz.
Israeli army radio said it was a "targeted" operation, a euphemistic term given to the series of assassinations adopted as an official Israeli policy since November 2000, which has seen more than 50 Palestinians accused of "terrorist" acts dead, including top leaders like Abu Ali Mustapha, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
ISRAEL PULLS OUT OF HEBRON
Meanwhile, the Israeli army pulled out of two trouble spots in the West Bank town of Hebron on Monday, giving a possible boost to a wobbly ceasefire, reported AFP and agencies.
The official Kuwaiti news agency (KUNA) cited eyewitnesses as confirming the pullback.
An Israeli government statement earlier hinted at a pull-out if the Palestinian Authority issued assurances there would be no more shooting by resistance fighters anywhere in the West Bank town.
Palestinains have spent the last 12 months fighting against a 34-year Israeli occupation of land seized from them in 1967. Well over 600 Palestinians, including 100 children, have been killed by occupation forces in that period.
An AFP correspondent saw a convoy of some 10 tanks and armored vehicles withdraw within a few minutes from the Palestinian neighborhoods of Abu Sneinah and Al Sheikh to a sector of Hebron under Israeli control.
The pullout came after Israeli state radio reports of a security meeting between Israeli and Palestinian representatives in a building housing the Israeli-Palestinian liaison committee in Hebron.
Israel was also expected Monday to ease its blockade of the autonomous Palestinian towns of Ramallah and Jericho in the West Bank.
The army had reoccupied the Abu Sneinah district on October 5 after Palestinian gunmen wounded two Jewish women. Since then five Palestinians have been killed in clashes with the Israeli army.
Officials said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his weekly cabinet meeting Sunday he would order a withdrawal if the Palestinian Authority promised to ensure a complete cessation of firing from the area if Israeli tanks withdrew.
But his chief of staff, General Shaul Mofaz, said in a statement he opposed the move on security grounds, sparking Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer's ire, added AFP.
The row resulted in the delay of the security meeting which had been scheduled for Sunday evening and during which Israeli and Palestinian security officials discussed the measures.
"Palestinian forces should replace ours in the neighborhoods of Abu Sneinah and Al Sheikh in Hebron and restore calm there. This is what the Palestinians propose," Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israeli public television.
"There are already four areas in the (Palestinian) territories with a special situation: Rafah, on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, Beit Jala (village between the West Bank city of Bethlehem and the Jewish settlement of Gilo in annexed east Jerusalem), Jericho (West Bank) and I hope now also in Hebron," Peres added.
The government statement said that "in case of a violation, the army will reoccupy these areas and others, according to its needs."
Under an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, Israel withdrew from 80 percent of self-rule Hebron in 1997, but an enclave where some 400 Jewish settlers live among 120,000 Palestinians continues to be under the control of hundreds of Israeli troops.
Arafat arrived in London Sunday for a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair that he hoped would boost his standing as he struggled to fulfill his truce obligations by reining in Islamic militants, who enjoy growing support among frustrated Palestinians.
Blair said in an interview with the British weekly The Observer that a "security bridge" should be created to move the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire process onto the next stage, which he said would include "serious talks" between Arafat and Sharon – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
