Israeli Troops Let Palestinian Police Re-enter Bethlehem
A convoy of Palestinian jeeps carrying about 100 armed police officers arrived in Bethlehem from Jericho today to begin a trial resumption of Palestinian authority there under an agreement with Israel reached Sunday.

Israeli forces remained stationed around the historic town, but the arrival of the armed Palestinian police officers marked the first time in months that they had appeared publicly in Bethlehem without the threat of being shot by Israeli patrols.

Under the agreement, the Israelis are also to pull back in Gaza, where, in contrast to the West Bank, they have largely stayed out of major population areas, except for raids to seize specific militants.

The agreement, negotiated by Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and the Palestinian interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, calls for the Palestinian forces to demonstrate that they are prepared to prevent attacks on Israel in exchange for an easing of the Israeli sieges on the Palestinian areas. If the arrangement is successful, Mr. Ben-Eliezer said, similar withdrawals will take place in other West Bank towns.

In Palestinian and Israeli streets, however, the agreement was treated with a hefty skepticism. The Israeli troops were still poised around Bethlehem and Gaza, ready to roll back in. Islamic militants denounced the agreement as a "new conspiracy against our people" and vowed to continue attacking Israelis, while Prime Minister Ariel Sharon kept a conspicuous distance from the deal.

Still, it was the first such arrangement negotiated directly between Israelis and Palestinians, and it came after an unusual stretch of calm. The Israeli authorities said the lull was largely a result of Israel's success in intercepting would-be attackers.

Over the past 23 months, successive efforts by the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to mediate a cease-fire have been foiled, either by Palestinian suicide attacks or by the Israeli killings of Palestinian militants.

One problem was that the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank have been decimated by the Israeli incursions. In Gaza, by contrast, the security forces have remained largely intact, for which reason the Israelis initially wanted to restrict the withdrawal to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians, however, refused, perceiving this as an attempt to drive a wedge between Gaza and the West Bank.

Underscoring the significance of the resumption of Palestinian authority, the arriving security forces were led by senior Palestinian officers: Hajj Ismail Jaber, the commander of Palestinian forces in the West Bank; Zuhair Manasreh, the commander of Preventive Security; and Nasser Yussef, the head of West Bank security.

"We are ready to fulfill our national duties and to protect the peace process, despite the fact that our security headquarters are destroyed by the Israelis and that 30 percent of our forces have been killed, wounded or arrested," said the governor of Bethlehem, Muhammad al-Madani.

One of the main tests of the Palestinians will be whether they can block militants from shooting at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, which is an easy target from much of Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem.

Few details of the arrangement have been made public, and residents of Bethlehem were still closing down for the 6:30 p.m. curfew that has been in force for many weeks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/20/international/middleeast/20MIDE.html