Israel Agrees to a Phased Withdrawal

Israel’s Security Cabinet decided late Thursday to begin a phased withdrawal of troops from Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank this weekend, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said.

Daniel Ayalon, foreign policy advisor to Sharon, said the withdrawal may start this weekend. He said U.S., Israeli and Palestinian security officials were expected to meet today to negotiate the terms. The Security Cabinet’s decision seemed to fall short of the Bush administration’s demand for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian territories occupied after the Oct. 17 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

The United States this week demanded that Israel pull out of six Palestinian cities and their surroundings. Israel Radio reported this morning that troops may first withdraw from the mostly Christian West Bank town of Beit Jala. More than 40 Palestinians have died in fighting since Israeli troops moved into the Palestinian-controlled territories.

Israel had kept up intensive military operations in the West Bank throughout the day Thursday.

In Washington, President Bush welcomed the pullout earlier Thursday of Israeli troops from one West Bank village, Beit Rima. He urged Israel to withdraw from all areas that its troops began occupying last week after the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

But it was unclear how quickly the Cabinet intended to end the largest Israeli military operation in Palestinian-held areas in years.

In a statement issued this morning, the Security Cabinet said the troops’ “departure will be made possible to the extent that the Palestinian Authority keeps its commitments.”

Meanwhile, the fighting continued. Israel Radio reported that three Palestinian gunmen who tried to cut through the perimeter fence of Gadid, a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, were shot dead early this morning by troops.

In Bethlehem on Thursday, three Palestinians died during fierce fighting, including a father of nine who apparently was a noncombatant, and a member of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s elite Force 17 guard. As Palestinians observed a day of mourning for two police officers and three security force members killed by Israeli troops during a raid Wednesday in Beit Rima, the army thrust into the northern West Bank towns of Kalkilya and Tulkarm. The troops quickly withdrew from Kalkilya but seized and held a Palestinian police post in Tulkarm. Palestinians reported that a major in the Palestinian intelligence service was killed in Tulkarm.

After nightfall, troops imposed a curfew on Awarta, near the West Bank city of Nablus, and were reportedly conducting house-to-house searches. The village is known as a stronghold of the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestine Liberation Organization faction that claimed responsibility for Zeevi’s assassination.

It was Zeevi’s slaying that triggered Israel’s incursion and brought the state to loggerheads with the Bush administration, which fears that the violence could cause its anti-terror coalition to unravel. Bush, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other officials have repeatedly called on Israel to withdraw immediately and not return to Palestinian-controlled territories.

Maj. Gen. Amos Malka, Israel’s chief of military intelligence, told reporters Thursday, hours before the Security Cabinet met, that the army had not yet achieved its goals. He said that only a few of 108 most-wanted militants had been killed or captured during the army’s siege of most major Palestinian towns and cities and its raids on villages.

“To arrest senior terrorists is very difficult,” he said during a briefing in Tel Aviv. “They know we want to arrest them. They run away. We have patience and time, and at the end of the day we will catch them.

But pressure had mounted all week on Israel. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, returning from talks with senior U.S. officials including Bush, said that the administration wants troops out “as soon as possible.” Peres was thought to be the only Cabinet minister in favor Thursday night of an immediate, full pullout.

Senior army officers who briefed the six senior Cabinet ministers were said to favor a gradual, staggered pullout from cities, with troops leaving areas only after the Palestinian Authority agrees to ensure order once the troops withdraw. According to reports on the Haaretz Web site and other Israeli media, the army’s recommendations were accepted by the Cabinet.

Bush seized on the pullout from Beit Rima, occupied by a large force of troops early Wednesday morning, as a sign that Israel was getting ready to loosen the stranglehold it has kept on six major West Bank cities for more than a week.

“The president believes that Israel’s partial pullout is a positive step,” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said in Washington.