Israeli Occupation Forces Kill 3 Palestinians, Withdraw from Nablus; Sharon Appoints Prominent General to Oversee His Unilateral Disengagement Plan

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Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) late Sunday shelled dead three Palestinians next to the Gaza Strip illegal Jewish settlement of Netzarim, as the Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei said he will ask Saudi Arabia to play a role with the international community to pressure the Israelis to implement the “roadmap” peace plan. Meanwhile Qurei’s Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon appointed a prominent military officer to oversee his unilateral disengagement plan.

Israel Radio said three allegedly armed Palestinians approached the isolated illegal Jewish settlement of Netzarim, southwest of Gaza City, late Sunday. IOF tanks opened fire at them and killed them, AP reported.

“The Israeli troops responded, opening fire in the direction of the source of the bombardment and the Palestinians announced that they had incurred three fatalities in their ranks,” the sources said.

“Many armed Palestinian activists were spotted late afternoon Sunday near the Netzarim settlement from where mortar shells were fired, injuring no one,” the sources added.

Earlier Sunday a statement by the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, said that four Qassam-1 missiles were fired also at the Dogit settlement to the north of the Gaza Strip and two others at the Nahal Uz settlement to the east of Gaza city.

In the West Bank, the IOF on Sunday dynamited a business shop in the Qasabah of the northern West Bank city of Nablus and the house of Hashem Abu Hamdan in the adjacent Balata refugee camp.

On Monday morning the IOF announced their military vehicles and troops have withdrawn from the Nablus. But it was not yet clear whether their withdrawal includes the nearby Balata refugee camp.

The IOF invaded both the city and the camp a week ago, sealed them off and imposed strict curfew on both communities, evacuating thousands of people into the cold winter weather.

Also on Sunday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei left for Saudi Arabia to try to increase Saudi participation in Middle East negotiations. The visit will be Qurei's first to the Gulf region since he became prime minister in October.

“I will ask (Saudi Arabia) to play a role with the international community to pressure the Israelis to implement the roadmap,” Qurei said in the West Bank city of Ramallah before leaving for Jordan en route to Saudi Arabia.

In 2002, Saudi Arabia presented its own proposal for Middle East peace, which was adopted by the latest Arab summit meeting in Beirut and was partially incorporated into the “roadmap” that was later endorsed by the United Nations Security Council resolution number 1515.

Qurei is expected on Tuesday to hold talks with Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath said.

Shaath added the Palestinians were hoping Saudi Arabia would use its close ties with the United States to further pressure Israel and would ask the Saudis for help in “encouraging Gulf states to support us financially.”

Qurei has been demanding that Israel remove its Apartheid Wall that is being built on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. Specifically, Qurei objects to the fact that the Wall is being built inside the West Bank, and not on the Green Line separating the West Bank from Israel.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed a prominent military officer to oversee his unilateral plan to disengage from the West Bank.

Sharon said earlier this month that he was considering abandoning efforts to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in favor of a self-imposed disengagement from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Sharon appointed Major General Giora Eiland to direct a task force with representatives from the “Defense,” Foreign and Justice Ministries as well as the military and security services, a government statement said.

Eiland recently completed a term as head of the military's planning division and is to assume chairmanship of the National Security Council, a top advisory panel to the prime minister, in the coming weeks.

The idea of unilateral Israeli measures has drawn stiff Palestinian and US criticism. Both insist that arrangements like borders must be reached through negotiations.

Separately Israeli Channel Two TV and Israel TV said Sharon and his “defense” minister Shaul Mofaz ordered the removal of four of the dozens of outposts that the "roadmap" peace plan requires Israel to dismantle.

All four outposts are in the West Bank and are inhabited, the reports said, adding that the illegal Jewish settlers would be given 10 days to appeal.

But Israel Radio reported that only one of the four outposts, Ginnot Arieh, is populated and only ten families live there.

The four are scattered around the West Bank and include one that had been removed before, but settlers rebuilt it. The largest of the outposts, Migron, with 43 families near the West Bank city of Ramallah, is not on the list, Israel Radio said.

The “roadmap” is a three-stage blueprint for ending three years of Palestinian-Israeli conflict and establishing a Palestinian state by 2005.

The first stage of the plan calls for "dismantlement" of violent Palestinian groups and the removal of outposts built since March 2001, along with a freeze in construction in veteran settlements.

Israeli Peace Now settlement watchdog says there are 103 settlement outposts in the West bank.

Separately an Israeli human rights group petitioned the country's Supreme Court to permit Palestinians to move freely through gates in the completed segments of the Apartheid Wall the Jewish state is building in the West Bank.

The petition of the Jerusalem-based Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), filed Sunday, followed an incident in which soldiers shot and wounded by a live bullet an Israeli demonstrator protesting against the Wall in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya on Friday, setting off an outcry and two IOF investigations.

The Wall’s first section - about 150 kilometers (90 miles) - was finished in June. In some parts, it runs close to the invisible Green Line, the frontier between Israel and the West Bank before the 1967 Mideast War. In other areas, it dips deep into the West Bank, isolating several Palestinian villages.

The purpose of the Supreme Court petition is to allow residents of isolated Palestinian villages to move freely to their agricultural land and water supplies and to reach medical and other services in nearby Palestinian towns, said ACRI’s lawyer Fatmah Ajou.

She said gates in the Wall are typically open only two or three times a day for about 45 minutes and are closed during Israeli holidays.

Israeli Ministry of Justice spokesman Jacob Galanti said the ministry has not yet drafted a response, “but we certainly intend to do so.”

Palestinians call the barrier the "Apartheid Wall" and a land grab, pointing especially to the sections that cut into the West Bank, including one planned to enclose thousands of Palestinians and some 45,000 Jewish settlers by dipping 30 kilometers (20 miles) over the Green Line.