Israeli forces kill 4 militants

West Bank raid imperils efforts toward cease-fire

Relatives of Palestinian militants killed by Israeli troops at a hospital in the town of Bethlehem yesterday. (Peter Dejong/Associated Press)

JERUSALEM - Israeli undercover troops killed four Palestinian militants in the West Bank city of Bethlehem yesterday, shattering a five-day lull in violence and threatening Egyptian efforts to mediate a cease-fire.

Among the four were two men who had been wanted by the Israelis for years: Muhammad Shehada of Islamic Jihad and Ahmed Balboul, a senior figure in Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militia affiliated with Fatah, the mainstream party headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

The four were killed while riding together in a car in central Bethlehem, Israeli army and Palestinian officials said. The army officials said that three rifles were found in the car and that all four had been involved in attacks against Israeli civilians. Shehada, they said, headed a network that was in direct contact with Islamic Jihad headquarters in Syria.

In an interview with The New York Times in July, Balboul said he was hoping to work out an amnesty deal for himself with the Israelis.

A Fatah spokesman in Bethlehem, Hassan Abed Rabbo, said yesterday that the Palestinian Authority had requested amnesty for Balboul but that the request was refused. Abed Rabbo said that as an Aqsa Brigades leader, Balboul was not involved in any joint activity with Islamic Jihad.

The other two in the car belonged to Islamic Jihad, according to Israeli army and Palestinian officials.

The raid occurred hours after Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas administration in Gaza, laid out the conditions for a temporary cease-fire, including a cessation of all Israeli military operations in the West Bank.

The terms were the same as those recently offered by other Palestinian officials and Egyptian mediators: an Israeli commitment to a "comprehensive" truce, including an end to "all acts of aggression" against the Palestinians; an end to "assassinations, killings, and raids"; and the lifting of the embargo on the Gaza Strip.

Hamas controls Gaza only. But Haniyeh said the truce should also apply to the West Bank, where the Israeli army and the forces of Abbas hold sway. "We will not abandon you, our people in the West Bank," Haniyeh said, adding, "aggression against you is aggression against us."

An Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza, Khaled al-Batsh, said in an interview this week that his group had accepted an Egyptian request for a temporary calm in order to create conditions for a broader truce involving the West Bank and Gaza. He said the success of the lull was "in the hands of the Israelis. If they attack," he said, the military wing of Islamic Jihad "will have to respond."

A senior Israeli Defense Ministry official was in Cairo for talks Sunday, but Israeli leaders have denied engaging in negotiations for a truce. They said that if Hamas stopped all the rocket fire and if the weapons smuggling into Gaza ceased, Israel would have no reason to attack, but they insisted that the army retained full freedom to act there.