Nazir Majally • Asharq Al-Awsat

RAMALLAH, West Bank, 3 August 2003 — The Palestinian Cabinet decided yesterday to launch an international campaign against Israel’s continued construction of a security barrier around the West Bank.

“The Palestinian Cabinet decided to make an international campaign against the wall in order to push Israel to stop building it,” Information Minister Nabil Amr said.

The barrier, which Israel refers to as a “security fence” and the Palestinians call a “wall”, has become one of the main bones of contention in the ongoing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and was last week criticized by US President George W. Bush.

The Cabinet also appointed Abdel Statah Hamayel to deal with the issue of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who are wanted by Israel, Amr said.

The move came just hours after Palestinian security forces arrested some 20 wanted militants inside the headquarters compound of veteran leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Amr would not be drawn to comment on the early-morning arrests, saying only: “The issue of the wanted men inside the muqata is still under discussion.”

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, announced yesterday it was ending its truce on anti-Israeli attacks after the arrest of its members by Palestinian security forces.

“We have ordered the resumption everywhere of our attacks and in particular suicide operations,” the group said in a statement. The group condemned the arrests, accusing those who carried them out, without naming them, of “collaborating” with Israel.

“This Americo-Zionist decision to arrest the activists was taken in Washington so that it could be applied in all Palestinian territories,” the statement went on.

“The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will strike with an iron fist all those who carry out Zionist and American plans.”

At least 14 of those arrested yesterday were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a spokesman for the group said, adding the raid had taken place in the early hours.

It was not immediately clear if the statement, distributed in several towns in the West Bank, concerned the Brigades’ armed sections in their entirety or merely a breakaway faction.

The group is effectively under Arafat’s command and signed up to the three-month suspension of attacks against Israel along with other radical armed Palestinian groups.