Israel raids Nablus, refugee camps

Witnesses described the incursion as Israel's broadest into Nablus in at least six months to arrest suspected militants. An army spokesman, however, said soldiers had been operating in the area every night for the past few weeks and had thwarted 13 bombing plots being hatched in the city since early October.

Army jeeps circled the city announcing a curfew over loudspeakers, Palestinian residents said. They said soldiers had detained at least 70 people in the evening hours, but some had been released.

Hours earlier, soldiers fired on demonstrators protesting against the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank, seriously wounding an Israeli protester and slightly injuring an American tourist.

The shooting marked the most serious clash yet between the army and protesters along the barrier, which Israel says is being built to keep Palestinian militants from entering the Jewish state. Palestinians and the international community have criticized Israel for erecting the barrier, which snakes through Palestinian territory, but Israelis widely support the project.

The raid and the violence followed Thursday's Palestinian bombing at a bus stop just outside Tel Aviv -- the first suicide attack in nearly three months -- and further dimmed the chances of a cease-fire between the two sides.

"The tanks are all around the city. They started coming in as soon as it got dark," said Nablus resident Abed al-Omari, speaking by phone from his home. He said Israeli soldiers were going door to door in parts of the city and in the Balata refugee camp looking for fugitives.

The Nablus area has been subject to repeated Israeli incursions since the start of the Palestinian uprising 39 months ago and was kept under curfew for months last year, when Israel invaded several Palestinian towns. Military officials describe the city and the adjacent camps and villages as hotbeds of Palestinian militancy, including Beit Furik, the home of the suicide bomber who carried out Thursday's attack. The bomber belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular group behind a small number of suicide attacks.

"The terror organizations are very active in Nablus right now, and the infrastructure is quite large," an army spokesman said. He said soldiers enter the city and the camps almost every night.

Egypt has been trying for weeks to broker a halt to the fighting. Israel's chief of staff, Major General Moshe Yaalon, said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper yesterday that one militant Islamic group, Hamas, was already adhering to an unofficial cease-fire.

"It's no coincidence that a group like Hamas decides to stop attacks within Israel. It comes from the realization that the organization is in danger," Yaalon told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

Other Israeli reports have speculated that the army is deliberately refraining from assassinating Hamas leaders as long as the group -- which was behind most of the suicide bombings in recent years -- launches no new attacks.

Israeli carried out its first pinpoint killing Thursday of a Palestinian militant in more than two months, but the target, Mekled Hamied, belonged to the Islamic Jihad group and not Hamas.

Yaalon said neither that shooting nor Thursday's bombing closed the door to a potential truce.

"It is possible that we will reach a cease-fire in the coming weeks. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be with us for many years to come, but I believe we have now passed the peak of the violent struggle," he told Yedioth Ahronoth.

Near the village of Masa in the West Bank, about 200 protesters, including Israelis, Palestinians, and foreigners, tried to dismantle a part of the barrier -- a mix of fences, trenches, walls, and electronic sensing devices -- Israel has been building for more than a year. The protesters, equipped with wire cutters and hammers, rattled a section of fence for a few minutes when soldiers on the other side opened fire, according to witnesses and television news footage.

One bullet seriously wounded a 22-year-old Israeli protester, identified as Gil Naamati, who was a soldier in a combat unit until a few weeks ago. An American woman was lightly wounded by shrapnel, according to organizers of the protest, who did not identify her.

"We were standing behind the fence trying to dismantle the lock mechanism. We presented no danger to the soldiers," said one of the protesters, who identified himself only as Henry. The army said the protesters ignored orders to leave the area. A spokesman said a colonel was appointed to investigate why the soldiers fired on unarmed civilians.