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West Bank raid by Israel endangers truce accord

Islamic Jihad threatens revenge just hours after the deal

JERUSALEM: Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants, including the suspected mastermind of a suicide attack, in a West Bank raid just hours after the two sides had reached a tentative new truce deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon postponed for a week a showdown with both coalition partners and Gaza pullout opponents as Parliament opened its winter session on Monday. Mr. Sharon did not manage before a planned vote to muster majority backing for three Cabinet Ministers he wants appointed, and failure in the vote could have set early elections in motion.

Pursuit of militants

Israeli forces encircled a house in the West Bank town of Qabatiyeh after sundown on Sunday in pursuit of two militants linked to a deadly suicide bombing in central Israel last week. The two men opened fire on the troops and tried to flee the house, so the soldiers opened fire and killed them, the army said.

Witnesses and Palestinian security officials identified one of the militants as Jihad Zakarneh, an Islamic Jihad member Israel accuses of planning the bombing.

Islamic Jihad threatened revenge. The Israeli military said three projectiles — apparently homemade rockets — were launched from northern Gaza, but nothing landed in Israel.

On Sunday, officials from both sides had said there was agreement to end days of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling that had followed days of deadly duelling. It was not clear whether the West Bank raid would scuttle the tentative deal, reached after U.S. intervention. Repeated fighting since Israel's Gaza pullout last month have all but buried the hopes for peacemaking that had attended Israel's first withdrawal from land the Palestinians claim for a future state. The hostilities are also hurting Gaza's chances of reviving an economy shattered by five years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. With violence simmering, Israel has kept a tight hold on Gaza's gateways to the outside world.

Israel shut down the main Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt shortly before the withdrawal, and has kept it shut for most of the time since, absent an agreement on how to handle security. It has also sealed vital cargo and worker crossings between Gaza and Israel, though it reopened two on Sunday that had been shut since the suicide bombing on Wednesday. Talks on the Rafah crossing resumed on Sunday night, but no agreements were announced. — AP

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