2 Palestinian Militants Held in Gaza

Two Islamic Jihad militants were arrested Saturday, Palestinian sources said, a day after an attack near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. Also Saturday, suspected militants riddled an Israeli bus with bullets, police said.

No one was injured in the assault on the armored bus near the West Bank city of Ramallah, police said. The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear.

In Gaza City, the two Islamic Jihad members were detained and their weapons confiscated, Palestinian security sources said without elaborating.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the recent Palestinian crackdown on anti-Israeli groups could help peace talks resume as outlined by an international commission headed by former Sen. George J. Mitchell.

Israel repeatedly has called for a complete cessation of violence before negotiations can restart.

“If the Palestinians continue at the pace they are going now, meaning making the arrests, and they start thwarting [attacks], I think that we can start implementing Mitchell,” Ben-Eliezer told Channel Two TV on Saturday.

He also said the Palestinians are preparing suicide attackers and car bombings as part of “an infrastructure for war,” Israeli media reported.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat called for an end to attacks against Israel two weeks ago. Since then, there has been a sharp decline in violence. Palestinian security forces have arrested some suspected militants, but the Israelis have demanded that Arafat take even stronger action.

Several hundred mourners attended the funeral of Palestinian militant Mahmoud Burai on Saturday in the Jabaliya refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza.

Burai and another man, both members of Islamic Jihad, attacked soldiers Friday near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.

The two men, armed with antitank missiles and a Kalashnikov assault rifle, fired on Israeli soldiers patrolling the area, the Israeli army said. Soldiers returned fire, killing Burai. The other assailant fled.

Burai was wearing an explosives belt. In a videotape he made before the attack, Burai, 23, said he was preparing for a suicide mission. The tape was aired on the Lebanese TV station Al Manar after the attack.