Nazir Majally, Arab News/Asharq Al-Awsat

JENIN, West Bank, 10 March 2004 — Israeli soldiers gunned down a young Palestinian mother of three yesterday in the West Bank town of Jenin during an incursion to arrest a local leader of the Islamic Jihad movement, sources on both sides said.

Dalal Al-Sabagh, 23, was hit in the head and the stomach as she tried to move one of her three children away from the window in the family’s home during shooting, Palestinian medical and security sources said.

A 25-year-old man was also seriously wounded when he was hit by shrapnel in the head and a news agency photographer was slightly injured when he was hit in the leg.

Palestinian and Israeli security sources said four people were arrested, including a local Jihad commander named Anas Hithnawi.

Meanwhile, the Hamas group said yesterday it may stop attacks from Gaza “for a certain time” if Israel withdrew from the territory, but it would resume and intensify them if Israel still held onto the West Bank.

Hamas’ founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin stressed in an interview that attacks in the West Bank itself would go on as long as it remained under Israel’s control.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says he wants to defuse conflict with Palestinians by unilaterally evacuating Jewish settlers from Gaza but vows to retain larger settlement blocs in the West Bank. Both territories were occupied in 1967.

“With regard to Gaza, resistance may stop for a certain time if all Israelis (settlers and soldiers) leave Gaza until we see what the fate of the West Bank, our refugees and Jerusalem will be,” Hamas’ spiritual leader said.

A senior Palestinian official said yesterday an international force should be deployed in the Gaza Strip if Israel withdraws from it, in order to help the Palestinian authority establish its rule there.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive, said “we want an international force that includes Arab parties and the Arab League, to enable the Palestinian authority to establish its rule on any territory evacuated by the Israeli forces.”

Abed Rabbo was speaking after a meeting with Arab League chief Amr Moussa, at the headquarters of the 22-member pan-Arab organization in the Egyptian capital.

Ariel Sharon struggled yesterday to keep a lid on increasingly vocal dissent in the military’s top ranks over his evolving plan to uproot Gaza settlements, political sources said.

Sharon planned to summon army chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon in coming days to explain his reported criticism of the prime minister’s unilateral “disengagement” strategy toward the Palestinians, the sources said. The rare public rift signaled growing divisions at the top over Sharon’s plan.

The right-wing leader was expected to lobby for diplomatic support for his controversial initiative in talks this week with visiting US envoys and at a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdallah that Sharon said would likely be held in a few days.

An official in King Abdallah’s office in Amman said he was unaware any talks had been scheduled.

Palestinians fear that by pursuing disengagement Israel is seeking to trade Gaza for permanent control over large swathes of the West Bank with its larger settlements, effectively depriving them of land they want for their own state.

Sharon’s office denied a television report he was enraged at Yaalon and would reprimand him for airing disagreement over the Gaza plan. But a source close to Sharon said he wanted to put a stop to the military’s public expressions of dissent.

“Sharon thinks Israel has to stop speaking with so many voices,” the source said.

Seeking to defuse the row with Sharon, Yaalon telephoned the prime minister on Monday, political sources said.

The commander of Hamas’ armed wing, Mohammad Deif, said yesterday an evacuation of settlers from Gaza would signal a victory for them. Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, is the main group behind a campaign of suicide bombings.

“The criminal Sharon was elected to smash our resistance in 100 days. But now the man who once said Netzarim (isolated settlement in Gaza) was just like Tel Aviv is planning to withdraw from Gaza without something in return,” he said in a rare voice interview on Hamas’ website.

— Additional input from agencies