Sharon Talks of Possible Troop Withdrawal From the Gaza Strip

Violence claimed the lives of one Israeli and one Palestinian on Tuesday, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke in unusually explicit terms about the prospect of a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, long regarded by many of his compatriots as a quagmire.

The Israeli man was slain Tuesday night by Palestinian gunmen near a Jewish settlement northwest of the West Bank city of Ramallah, the army said. He was identified as Roi Arbel, a 29-year-old father of five. Three of his companions were wounded in the attack.

Israel Radio said this morning that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization, had claimed responsibility.

The winding road through rocky, terraced hills where the shooting took place is considered particularly ambush-prone. The road, which is mainly used by Jewish settlers and runs close to the settlement of Talmon, has been the scene of several similar shootings during the 39-month Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Earlier Tuesday, a man identified by the Israeli military as a Palestinian gunman died in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops. The incident occurred in the volatile southern Gaza town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.

Sharon, speaking to Bedouin troops, who are often called to hazardous duty in Gaza, said he hoped the Israeli military presence in the Mediterranean seaside enclave would end, although he suggested no timetable.

“I hope you will not have to sit in the Strip any longer and that you will truly be free to handle more important matters,” the prime minister was quoted by Army Radio as telling the troops at an induction ceremony.

The Israeli leader has referred, though in vague terms, to the likelihood that some isolated Jewish settlements in Gaza will be uprooted. But until now, he has said little about the troop presence there.

Large but undisclosed numbers of Israeli soldiers, both regular troops and reservists, guard the approximately 6,500 Jewish settlers who live among 1 million Palestinians in Gaza.

A stronghold of radical Islamic groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and a simmering caldron of Palestinian poverty and fury, Gaza has claimed a disproportionately large share of Israeli soldiers’ lives since the start of the intifada.

Gaza has been occupied by Israel since 1967, when it was seized from Egypt. It became semiautonomous under the peace process of the 1990s, but Israel has clamped a tight military hold on the territory in the course of the current conflict.

In the West Bank town of Tulkarm, which Israel says is the source of many Palestinian suicide attacks, the Israeli military wrapped up an intensive two-day operation late Tuesday that Palestinians said resulted in the detention of hundreds of men.

Residents of the refugee camp adjoining the town said that several hundred men between the ages of 15 and 50 were rounded up for questioning and that troops used explosives to break through the wall of one cement-block structure to the next during house-to-house searches.

Israel said at least one would-be suicide bomber was among half a dozen Palestinians held. Most of the other detainees were quickly released, the army said.

Meanwhile, fallout continued over the Sharon government’s response to tentative peace overtures from Syria.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav on Tuesday renewed his invitation to Syrian President Bashar Assad, first made a day earlier, to come to Jerusalem for talks. Syria has rejected Katsav’s offer of unconditional negotiations -- apparently made without Sharon’s approval -- as insufficiently serious.

But the Syrian feelers, and Sharon’s cool response to them, have generated a wave of debate among Israeli policymakers about Syria’s intentions. Israel and Syria technically remain at war, and the two have had few meaningful contacts since 2000.

Israel’s chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, told lawmakers that in recent weeks, Assad had consistently expressed the wish to open a dialogue, despite a less-than-receptive reaction from the Israeli side.

According to several lawmakers present, Zeevi-Farkash told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that Israeli intelligence assessments indicated that even preliminary Syrian overtures toward Israel had created friction between Assad and Hezbollah, an Islamic group sworn to Israel’s destruction.