Troops Kill Militant in Gunfight

Israeli troops killed a Palestinian militant in a shootout Saturday as violence continued and talks to ease Israel’s military grip on the West Bank and Gaza Strip bogged down.

In the gun battle in the West Bank city of Jenin, a 21-year-old member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group affiliated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, was killed after he and two other militants shot at the soldiers.

Meanwhile, an Israeli tank fired on stone-throwers in Nablus, injuring at least six people, witnesses said. And on the outskirts of Nablus, Israeli troops and Palestinians clashed after a joint Arab-Jewish peace group tried to deliver food to Palestinians living under curfew.

About 400 members of the group Taayush were stopped at an army checkpoint. Military officials said the activists, all Israeli citizens, were blocked because they had not coordinated their entry into Palestinian areas with the army.

The clashes underlined the fragility of a week-old deal aimed at pulling back Israeli troops from Palestinian cities and curbing militant attacks.

Israel withdrew troops from the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Tuesday under an agreement that also called for lifting restrictions on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in return for Palestinian security forces neutralizing militants targeting Israelis.

But a new round of talks failed to yield agreement on an Israeli pullout from Hebron, one of the six West Bank cities under closure. “Israel has frozen the agreement,” Nabil abu Rudaineh, a top advisor to Arafat, said Saturday.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Channel 1 television: “First of all, we must deepen the effort [to halt violence] in Gaza and Bethlehem. It is pointless to move forward ... unless there is quiet.”

Palestinian militant groups have vowed to keep up attacks. Late Saturday, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade members said they killed a Palestinian woman, Ikhlas Yassin, 35, whom they suspected of collaborating with Israel.