JERUSALEM (REUTERS) — Israeli forces rolled back into the West Bank city of Tulkarm Tuesday, just hours after Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would hold new talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a bid to secure a cease-fire.
The announcement of more meetings by Powell, entering the sixth day of a peace mission after 18 months of bloodshed, followed a pledge by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to pull out within a week from two other West Bank cities and a proposal for a regional peace conference.
Witnesses in Tulkarm said tanks swept in from several directions in the early hours in what an Israeli military source said was “a limited operation to arrest Palestinian militants.” There were no immediate reports of fighting.
Announcing Powell’s plans earlier, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, “Secretary of State Powell will meet with Prime Minister Sharon late this afternoon. We are also making arrangements to meet with Chairman [Yasser] Arafat on Wednesday morning.”
President Bush, traveling in Iowa, spoke to Sharon by telephone for 15 minutes Monday, and the president found Sharon’s promise to start a withdrawal a positive development, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
“The president expressed his belief that this will increase the prospects to bring peace to the region,” Fleischer said. “The president urged the prime minister to consider the human dimensions and to improve human conditions throughout the West Bank.”
As Powell pursues his mission, few Israelis are in a mood to celebrate Independence Day, marking the 54th anniversary of the creation of the Jewish state.
Israel remembers its war dead in a ceremony Tuesday night, and the annual independence celebrations immediately begin.
Powell, who visited Lebanon and Syria Monday in a bid to avert the creation of a second Middle East battlefront, last held separate talks with Sharon and Palestinian President Arafat Sunday.
Sharon announced Monday his timetable for a partial withdrawal a day after Powell urged him to halt the 17-day-old military onslaught and hours after soldiers seized Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi, 42, considered to be one of Arafat’s potential successors.
“Not more than a week”
The Israeli leader said his forces would be out of Jenin — where they had seen the fiercest fighting — within a “couple of days” and would leave Nablus in “not more than a week.”
But he gave no hint of when they would leave Ramallah, where Arafat has been penned in by Israeli tanks, and Bethlehem, where soldiers remain in an armed standoff with Palestinian gunmen in the Church of the Nativity.
“We’re on the way out,” Sharon said in an interview with CNN. Israeli troops moved into the West Bank March 29 after a wave of suicide bombings that killed Israelis.
Israeli forces left Tulkarm and Qalqilya a week ago after intense U.S. and international pressure to begin a withdrawal. An Israeli military source said of Tuesday’s incursion, “This is not a reoccupation.”
Sharon repeated his view that Israel would never be able to achieve peace with Arafat and said he should be replaced by other Palestinian leaders.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sharon was defying Washington and the international community by refusing to withdraw immediately from the West Bank as Bush had demanded.
“He’s playing with words,” Erekat said. “He is turning our towns, villages and refugee camps into big prisons.”
Powell endorsed Sharon’s idea for a U.S.-hosted Middle East peace conference, saying it did not necessarily have to involve Arafat — a key Israeli condition.
But political analysts said without Arafat, such a meeting would be a non-starter since Arab states would boycott it.
Soldiers arrest senior Palestinian leader
Israel arrested Barghouthi, a senior leader of Arafat’s Fatah faction, Monday, describing him as the head of “the most murderous terrorist group” in the West Bank.
Sharon vowed to put Barghouthi on trial, but Erekat said that would violate Israeli-Palestinian interim peace accords.
Israel has accused Barghouthi of leading Fatah-affiliated militants behind shootings and suicide bombings. He denies the allegations, while maintaining Palestinians have a right to resist Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
At least 1,272 Palestinians and 452 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
Powell ventured past Israeli tanks Sunday to Arafat’s bullet-pocked headquarters in Ramallah to meet the Palestinian leader; he later held more talks with Sharon.
Powell’s talks with Arafat failed to win agreement on a truce Palestinians say must start with an Israeli withdrawal.
Sharon told Powell — and repeated to CNN Monday — Israeli troops would not complete their pullout until the army had rooted out militants behind attacks on Israelis.
An Israeli political source said Israel would pursue the conference proposal only on condition Arafat be excluded, and Sharon predicted to CNN that it would take place within weeks.
Arafat said Sunday he would support the convening of a conference if Bush backed it and it was accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal.
I
n a sign of growing Muslim anger over the Israeli assault on the West Bank, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for Islamic states to show their solidarity with the Palestinians by declaring a one-month oil embargo against Israel’s main allies.