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Israel and the Palestinians agreed in high-level security talks on Sunday to launch a plan to ease an Israeli military clampdown in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the Israeli Defense Ministry said.
If implemented, the agreement could pave the way for a cease-fire to end more than 22 months of violence in a Palestinian uprising in which more than 2,000 people have died.
Previous efforts to end the violence with similar initiatives have failed due to Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military strikes against militant leaders.
"The importance of the initiative is that it will build trust for both sides essential to any future security and diplomatic steps," said Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who earlier said the aim was to achieve a cease-fire.
Ben-Eliezer sealed the deal in four hours of talks with a Palestinian delegation headed by Interior Minister Abdal Razzak al-Yahya and Yasser Arafat 's security adviser, Mohammed Dahlan.
"Both sides agree to start implementing the initiative tomorrow in Gaza and Bethlehem," the Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding the Palestinians would "take responsibility to calm the security situation and reduce violence and terror." "The Defense Minister agreed that Israel for its part would do everything in order to ease conditions on the Palestinian population especially for civilians and in the humanitarian area at this time," it said.
The statement made no specific reference to military withdrawal, which Palestinians had demanded as part of any bargain calling for their security services to crack down on militant groups targeting Israelis.
But the ministry said the sides also agreed to a new round of security talks by lower-ranking military officers in the West Bank and Gaza in the next few days.
TURNAROUND
In response to a wave of suicide bombings, Israeli troops two months ago reoccupied West Bank cities that were handed to Palestinian rule under interim peace accords in 1994-95. The army also tightened its grip on the Gaza Strip.
Sunday's talks were the first since August 7, when top security officials of the two sides failed to agree on Ben-Eliezer's plan to relax the army's grip in Gaza as a test case before doing the same in West Bank cities.
Palestinian security officials had demanded at least one West Bank city be included in the pilot plan.
In a turnaround on Sunday before the talks, Ben-Eliezer said he was willing to consider expanding what he calls the "Gaza first" proposal to West Bank cities.
"The main idea is to achieve a cease-fire and for tensions and all the violence to abate," Ben-Eliezer told reporters at a meeting with senior U.N. humanitarian envoy Catherine Bertini.
Television coverage of the start of the talks in a Tel Aviv hotel provided the first pictures of senior Israeli and Palestinian officials meeting for months. Most recent meetings have been held in strict secrecy.
SUSPECTS DETAINED
Pressing on with operations against militants, the Israeli army on Sunday detained 16 suspects in Gaza and the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Qalqilya, a military spokesman said.
Israel's Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction at the request of seven human rights groups to stop the use of Palestinian civilians as "human shields." The injunction was issued pending a response by the state within seven days.
The petition arose out of last week's death of a 19-year-old Palestinian who was forced by Israeli troops to knock on the door of a wanted militant. The Palestinian died in a hail of bullets apparently fired from the militant's house.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan ( news - web sites) sent Bertini, an ex-head of the World Food Programme, to the region to assess Palestinian humanitarian problems under Israeli blockades and curfews.
Last week, she had talks with Arafat in his compound in Ramallah, which is hemmed in by Israeli troops.
World Bank ( news - web sites) figures show half of the more than three million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live in poverty on $2 a day. Aid agencies say malnutrition is rising.
"I can assure you one thing, that...we will do everything possible in order to ease the life of the Palestinians," Ben-Eliezer said with Bertini at his side. "The Palestinian people are not our enemy. We are fighting the terror."
At least 1,503 Palestinians and 588 Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian revolt that erupted in 2000 after negotiations on a Palestinian state as part of a final peace treaty stalled.
(China Daily August 19, 2002)
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