City Curfews and Politics Strain Calm in West Bank
Israeli military and government officials were speaking of keeping the troops in the Palestinian cities for months to enforce the uneasy calm prevailing for the moment. But behind the scenes they are worrying that they may be forced to take responsibility for civil administration, a task they say they want to avoid.

We have had some victories," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting this afternoon. "But there still remain deep problems."

Mr. Sharon proclaimed a policy of seizing and holding Palestinian territory early on the morning of June 19, after a rush-hour suicide bombing of a commuter bus here took 19 lives. Even as the army began to move out, there was another bombing in Jerusalem that evening at a bus stop and hitchhiking post used by settlers and soldiers headed to the West Bank; five Israelis died in that attack.

There have been no suicide bombings in the two and a half weeks since, though on June 20, a Palestinian gunman did raid a Jewish settlement, killing five, and the next day a group of Jewish settlers shot and killed a Palestinian villager. In that climate few Israelis are ready to breath easy. The army and the police are on constant alert.

On the Palestinian side, there is private suffering and political confusion. More than 700,000 people in seven of the eight major cities in the West Bank are being kept in their houses under curfew, allowed out to shop frantically for a couple of hours every few days. A million more in surrounding villages are cut off from medical services, schools, work and commerce by the city curfews along with fences and barriers. International aid workers warn it is a disaster in the making.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/international/middleeast/08MIDE.html