Alongside Israeli Siege, a New Hope for Talks

Israeli soldiers pried open boarded-up shops and searched houses here Saturday, pressing their latest siege to root out militant cells that Israel says are responsible for recent attacks.

Despite the crackdown, high-level talks between Israel and the Palestinians were expected this week--possibly including a meeting involving Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, officials and Israeli news reports said.

Bulldozers piled up soil and rubble to block the entrances to Nablus’ Old City while tanks and armored vehicles crawled through its empty streets, enforcing a strict curfew.

Witnesses said several people were arrested Saturday in addition to 50 rounded up Friday, the first day of the crackdown that followed two bombings in Jerusalem last week.

Armed with hammers and metal bars, Israeli soldiers wound through narrow alleys, opening shuttered shop fronts and searching houses.

Meanwhile, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian man, Palestinian witnesses said. They said the troops were reimposing a curfew at the end of the day and shot 40-year-old Abdel Rahim Tawil in the head while he was driving a truck. The army said it was checking the report.

Israel launched its latest crackdown after Wednesday’s bombing at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, which killed seven people, including five Americans.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City that killed the Islamic group’s military leader and 14 others, nine of them children.

Israeli officials say Nablus has replaced nearby Jenin as the main hub of Palestinian terrorist cells responsible for attacks in the last two weeks.

Despite the recent attacks and Israel’s stepped-up siege, Israeli officials suggested Saturday that Sharon was willing to meet with the new Palestinian interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh.

“It could be; it depends on the developments in the situation,” said Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin.

Israel’s Channel Two television and Army Radio said the meeting could come this week.

Yehiyeh, meanwhile, said he is also planning to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer before a Palestinian delegation heads to Washington on Wednesday.

Talks on implementing cease-fires in certain Palestinian areas could occur in the coming days, said a spokesman for Ben-Eliezer.

Sharon has not met with top Palestinian officials for months, although his dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, has held several meetings recently with Yehiyeh and the new Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayed.

Peres plans to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday in Cairo, an advisor to the foreign minister said.