Israel Postpones Pullout, Citing Renewed Attacks

Israeli forces who seized this biblical city 10 days ago abruptly called off a planned withdrawal Saturday, citing a handful of shooting attacks. Palestinians charged that Israel was looking for a pretext to maintain its expanded occupation of parts of the West Bank.

As news of the delay spread, gunfire rang out over Bethlehem. Palestinians fired assault rifles across the night sky, each barrage answered with large-caliber Israeli rounds. But the shooting subsided late Saturday, and Palestinians insisted that they were trying to enforce a cease-fire.

Israel’s decision throws into doubt its promise to withdraw from all of the six West Bank cities and towns it invaded or surrounded after the Oct. 17 assassination of a hard-line Israeli Cabinet minister by Palestinian militants. The Israeli government has ignored U.S. demands to pull out immediately and reiterated Saturday that it wants the Palestinian Authority to arrest dozens of terror suspects and halt all shooting before its troops and tanks will move.

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had agreed in a CIA-mediated security meeting Friday to begin withdrawals Saturday in Bethlehem and neighboring Beit Jala, but it reneged, saying the Palestinians had not lived up to their end of the bargain.

Bethlehem, the traditional town of Jesus’ birth, has recently been the scene of some of the worst Israeli-Palestinian combat in years. The withdrawal here was to have served as a test case paving the way for the wider pullout.

In Bethlehem, Palestinian political leaders convened two dozen militia commanders Saturday evening to enlist their support for a cease-fire. Gathered in the Bethlehem Peace Center on Manger Square, a few yards from the traditional birthplace of Jesus, hardened gunmen sat in a circle of wooden chairs and heard pleas to stop shooting at Israelis.

“But what do you want us to do if the Israelis keep shooting?” asked one fighter dressed in black with a pistol on his hip. “Are we just supposed to watch?”

“Save your ammunition; don’t shoot back, and let them show their true face,” urged Salah Tamari, a prominent Bethlehem leader and member of the Palestinian legislature. “They are trying to provoke you. You are so easy to provoke.”

The men, some in camouflage, two in helmets and all with automatic rifles, were a hard sell. The meeting began before Israel announced its decision to call off the withdrawal.

Addressing the gunmen, Kamal Hmeid, an influential leader of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, told them to hold fire and offered an unusually candid appraisal of the Palestinian plight.

The people of Bethlehem and Beit Jala “are tired,” he said. “Schools are closed. We are weak. It is a deteriorating situation. We have to change the rules of the game.”

About an hour into the meeting, news of Israel’s delay crackled on the radios and walkie-talkies of the militia commanders. Some stormed out. Tamari said he believed that the men would hold their end of a cease-fire, but other Palestinian factions have proven harder to control.

Israeli officials said the withdrawal was suspended indefinitely after Palestinians opened fire on Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem earlier Saturday and on the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, on disputed land south of Jerusalem. Israel considers Gilo a part of Jerusalem.

The most serious fighting of the day erupted when Israeli special forces took over an eight-story building on one of Bethlehem’s main roads, near a central intersection that leads to Beit Jala. The soldiers, some wearing black ski masks and armed with sniper rifles, M-16s and Uzis, laid concertina wire in the stairwell of the Tal Sidre office building, packed upper-floor windows with sand bags and took up positions.

Seven Palestinians who showed up for work were captured by the soldiers and locked up. An eighth escaped and alerted Palestinian security forces of the Israeli presence in the heart of Bethlehem. Palestinian police arrived and fought a pitched gun battle with the soldiers for about half an hour.

Three tanks and armored personnel carriers eventually arrived to rescue and evacuate the soldiers. The Palestinian civilians were released unharmed.

One was Farid Atras, a 26-year-old lawyer who was heading for his office when he stumbled upon the Israeli soldiers. They motioned for him to be quiet, took his ID card and cellular phone, and locked him up with other Palestinians, he said.

“They accuse us of being terrorists, and they come into our city and attack and terrorize us, and then expect us to be silent,” said Atras, wearing gold wire-rim glasses and a gray tweed jacket.

It was not clear why Israeli forces took up new positions in the center of Bethlehem just a few hours before a withdrawal was scheduled to take place. Army officials would not divulge details but said the building takeover was part of a specific anti-terrorism operation. The top floor of the building gives a clear view of streets around Bethlehem University that have been used by Palestinian shooters.

Mohammed Madani, the newly appointed governor of Bethlehem, said that he ordered his Fatah loyalists and all other factions to heed a cease-fire but that this would be nearly impossible to sustain without the Israeli withdrawal.

Arafat put Madani in the Bethlehem post last month after residents complained of increasing lawlessness.

Most of the militia commanders who appeared more willing to entertain a cease-fire are members of Fatah. But among the others represented, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the radical faction whose armed wing took responsibility for the Cabinet minister’s assassination, has nothing to gain from any agreements between the Palestinian Authority and the Sharon government. Arafat has already arrested several PFLP members, and the group sees no reason to observe a cease-fire.

Also Saturday, a Palestinian who belonged to Fatah was killed in an Israeli incursion in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, and four Israelis were wounded in a drive-by shooting near Hebron in the West Bank, authorities said.