As Israel and the Palestinians took steps Wednesday to implement a truce, reports swept Israel that undercover commandos had ventured into the West Bank and captured at least six suspects sought in the mob lynching of two soldiers last week.
Among those apprehended and taken back to Israel, according to the Israeli reports, was the young Palestinian who stood in the window of the Ramallah police station last Thursday, his blood-covered hands held up triumphantly for the world to see. The Israeli government would not confirm the reports.
Accounts of the secret raid were welcomed by Israelis who had vowed retribution, while the reports were denied by Palestinian authorities as “baseless.” News of the arrests, which came just a day after a U.S.-brokered truce to defuse the three-week crisis, raised fears that the action could further inflame the situation.
As the drumbeat of clashes softened slightly across much of the Palestinian territories Wednesday, Israelis and Palestinians took initial steps to carry out the truce reached at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik on Tuesday.
The Israelis partially lifted a closure on Palestinian cities and reopened Gaza International Airport. The Palestinians rearrested 25 members of Hamas, including a high-ranking official for the militant Islamic group, as required by the Sharm el-Sheik agreement, a Hamas official said.
While Palestinian President Yasser Arafat made a qualified public call to end the violence, Israeli and Palestinian security officials held two separate meetings under the auspices of CIA officials in an effort to restart security cooperation that could help curtail a conflict that has left more than 100 dead and 2,000 injured, nearly all of them Palestinians.
Marring a day of slightly raised hopes was the explosion of two unusually large bombs near an Israeli passenger bus in the Gaza Strip. No Israelis were hurt, but several Arabs were injured by the second blast near an Israeli army base at Rafiah, Israeli television said.
The Palestinians were allegedly moving the bomb toward the military outpost when it exploded, rekindling fears that the street clashes will be followed by major terrorist attacks.
“It is not clear that this is our last test,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned later at a meeting at a Galilee kibbutz. “We do not succumb to violence.”
A 25-year-old Arab from a village near Hebron who suffered a head wound in Oct. 12 clashes died in a Jordanian hospital on Wednesday.
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sought a promise of help Wednesday from Syrian President Bashar Assad in freeing three Israeli soldiers and a reserve colonel kidnapped by the Islamic group Hezbollah. But she said she did not receive a firm commitment.
Israeli officials were releasing few details about the alleged capture of the Palestinian mob suspects, and official government spokesmen said they could neither confirm nor deny the report. But security sources leaked the report to news organizations throughout the day Wednesday.
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The suspects’ faces were seen around the world last Thursday after Italian television captured them climbing through the windows of a Ramallah police station, beating on the soldiers inside an upstairs room and then tossing one of their bodies out a window.
Below, a mob pounced on the body, hammering and mutilating it with sticks and a metal window frame. Many members of the mob had come from a nearby funeral of a Palestinian youth killed by Israeli soldiers the day before.
Israeli officials said the two reserve soldiers had taken a wrong turn into Ramallah, where they were arrested by Palestinian police. Palestinian officials asserted that the soldiers had been on an undercover mission.
Various reports of the raid said that an elite Israeli army unit apprehended from five to eight suspects in villages near Ramallah. They were located by Israel’s domestic Shin Bet spy agency, and then reportedly taken back to Israel for interrogation.
While Palestinian officials dismissed the reported arrests as an attempt to hurt Palestinian morale or ferret out where the suspects were hiding, the report had a ring of truth for those familiar with Israel’s history of daring exploits to bring fugitives to justice.
“I say in the most unequivocal way possible: Justice will reach those people who perpetrated this act, just like it reached those who perpetrated the Munich massacre [at the 1972 Olympics],” Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh told Israeli television Wednesday night.
The claimed raid could have explosive implications if it is determined that the army unit ventured into Palestinian-controlled territory. An official with the Palestinian Authority said that would be a violation of the agreement reached at Sharm el-Sheik.
Other Palestinian officials cautioned that although the Israelis may have arrested some suspects, that didn’t mean they were necessarily guilty of a crime.
“It should be noted that [one village where arrests allegedly took place] was the village of the martyr whose funeral was being held when the two Israelis were captured,” said Ghassan Khattib, a Palestinian political analyst. “That’s why those villagers were in Ramallah. But people who did the killing are not on the cameras. People who do these things usually are more careful. So we have to wait and see.”
As the two sides took the initial steps to implement the Sharm el-Sheik truce, the countdown began on a 48-hour deadline for the street clashes to end.
The Israelis opened the borders for Arabs to travel to Jordan and Egypt and lifted the closure that had been in effect for all of the major cities of the West Bank. Palestinians are still barred from entering Israel.
“We have done almost all we were required to do almost immediately without waiting a minute. Now we expect the Palestinians to do the same,” said Israeli government spokesman Nachman Shai. He noted that the violence had declined somewhat, but added that the situation still was not “tranquil.”
As of Wednesday, the Israeli army has not removed tanks it had stationed at the edge of most Palestinian towns, as required by the truce. Yarden Vatikai, an army spokesman, said the tanks would be removed soon if there is no violence. “They are not there for a parade,” he said.
Israeli officials also emphasized that police had arrested two Jewish settlers from the West Bank community of Itamar on Wednesday in the shooting death of one Palestinian farmer and six others a day before. Villagers said the settlers had opened fire unprovoked.
As part of the cease-fire deal, the Palestinians are expected not only to rearrest the militants who were set free from Palestinian jails during the crisis, but also to disarm hundreds of paramilitary gunmen and stop alleged incitement by the Palestinian media.
Arafat had wanted an international inquiry into the causes of the violence. But in what was seen as a compromise, he was persuaded to agree to a more limited fact-finding mission overseen by the U.S. and the United Nations.
On Wednesday, Arafat issued a call for the end of the violence that was repeatedly broadcast over Palestinian radio and television. It was not as clear as the Israelis might like, however, because he added that the Palestinians’ actions would depend on the actions taken by the Israelis.
As the day began, Palestinian television presented an endless parade of somber images, from stone-throwing youngsters to funeral processions, all accompanied by stirring songs of struggle. That had been the daily fare since the beginning of the clashes in late September, leading to the Israeli charges of incitement.
“We cannot jump from this mood into another to another. We are doing it slowly,” explained Radwan Abu Ayyash, chairman of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., the parent of the Palestinians’ official television and radio stations.
The reluctance to bury the images of Palestinians as victims of the clashes also reflected what Abu Ayyash described as Palestinians’ overwhelming rejection of the cease-fire deal.
Still, by the end of the day the television station halted its presentation of martial music and solemn images, and returned to most of its regular broadcasting, Abu Ayyash said.
Indeed, while Palestinian officials appeared to be sending the message that they would live up to their part of the cease-fire agreement, Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza were sending another message–one of unanimous rejection.
For the second day in a row a leaflet, signed by 12 groups representing almost every political faction among the Palestinians, called on people to turn their backs on the deal.