Israeli Soldiers Kill 5 Palestinian Gunmen in Jenin

Undercover Israeli army troops shot dead five gunmen in the Palestinian town of Jenin on Wednesday in one of the bloodiest such engagements in the West Bank in months, eyewitnesses and officials said.

The deadly shootout came on a day that Israeli and Palestinian officials signaled readiness to set a long-delayed meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian Authority counterpart, Ahmed Korei.

Both sides indicated that the talks might take place as soon as next week, but each stressed that details remained to be worked out and that no firm date had been set. Israeli media reported that the Sharon-Korei meeting was expected to take place Tuesday.

Korei took office in October, but still has not had a face-to-face meeting with Sharon. By contrast, his predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas, met with the Israeli leader within three weeks of assuming his post.

In Jenin, a focus of tensions between the two sides in the northern West Bank, Palestinians who witnessed the shootout said Israeli troops in plainclothes fired without provocation on a car with the five gunmen inside. Special Israeli units from both the army and the paramilitary border police sometimes use Arabic speakers in native dress to infiltrate communities in the West Bank.

The Israeli military declined to say what unit was involved in the firefight. But the military said the five Palestinian men were known to be members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade militant group, and were on their way to carry out an attack at the nearby Jewish settlement of Kadim, an isolated community outside Jenin.

The military said soldiers were hunting for an Al Aqsa fugitive when they spotted a suspicious car, stopped it, and the gun battle erupted.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, speaking to reporters at his West Bank headquarters, denounced the deaths in Jenin as a “massacre.” The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is loosely linked to his Fatah faction.

Wednesday’s midafternoon clash was unusual in that it occurred in the daylight hours.

Israeli troops stage near-daily raids in West Bank towns and cities in search of wanted Palestinian militants, but usually carry them out before dawn so that bystanders will not be drawn into the confrontations.

An Israeli incursion into two Gaza Strip refugee camps this week left at least four Palestinian bystanders dead, along with 10 Palestinian gunmen, when the army’s operation spilled over into daytime.

The disclosure Wednesday of tentative plans for what would be the first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in eight months at the leadership level came on the eve of the scheduled arrival of three ranking U.S. envoys.

The American mediators -- Assistant Secretary of State William J. Burns, Mideast specialist Elliot Abrams of the National Security Council, and Stephen Hadley, the council’s deputy director -- are following up on a visit last month, during which they attempted to revive direct negotiations under the U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan.

At the same time, the American envoys have been seeking more detailed information about the Israeli prime minister’s “disengagement” initiative, a proposal whose initial stages would involve uprooting most or all of the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Lower-level Israeli and Palestinian officials are due to meet Sunday to try to finalize details of the prospective Sharon-Korei talks.

Korei, speaking at a question-and-answer session after a lecture in Norway, said, “The date is not fixed yet” for any meeting, Associated Press reported from Oslo.

As Sharon’s government promotes its disengagement plan, neighboring Egypt increasingly has been drawn into discussions about the fate of Gaza, the impoverished coastal strip that Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East War.

Israeli media reported that Egypt’s intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, had held talks with Sharon this week.

On Wednesday, Suleiman met with Arafat at the Palestinian leader’s compound in Ramallah.

Cairo is concerned about the potential for anarchy in the wake of any Israeli pullout from Gaza, which borders Egypt.

Israel also is worried about the growing strength of Palestinian militant groups in Gaza. On Wednesday, it announced that it had broken up a guerrilla cell in the southern Gazan town of Khan Yunis that had the backing of the Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah.

Israeli officials said the cell had been planning an air attack, using a small drone craft, on a Jewish settlement in Gaza.

Arafat notched a political victory Wednesday when Palestinian lawmakers, meeting at his shell-damaged headquarters, picked an ally of his, Rouhi Fatouh, as speaker of the Palestinian parliament, a post once held by Korei.

The post is largely ceremonial, but if Arafat is unable to serve, the parliament speaker is to succeed him for two months until a general election can be held.