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Israel hands over jericho to palestinians { March 17 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/03/17/israel_hands_over_jericho_to_palestinians/http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/03/17/israel_hands_over_jericho_to_palestinians/
Israel hands over Jericho to Palestinians
By Dan Ephron, Globe Correspondent | March 17, 2005
JERICHO, West Bank -- Israel handed control over security in this quiet desert town back to the Palestinians yesterday after weeks of haggling, highlighting the improving relations between the two sides but also the lingering suspicions after more than four years of fighting.
The Israeli army dismantled the westernmost of three checkpoints surrounding Jericho and eased travel restrictions in and out of the West Bank town, but kept troops poised along a main highway nearby, saying the soldiers needed to screen cars for militants and suicide bombers. The two remaining Israeli checkpoints, north and south of town, will remain for the time being, though Israeli troops will no longer search cars entering Jericho from the south.
A number of Palestinian checkpoints were erected following the Israeli moves.
The handover, complete with a small signing ceremony and the lowering of an Israeli flag at the checkpoint west of Jericho, marked one of the first practical steps toward restoring Palestinian security control over the West Bank since Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian president two months ago.
Israel, which captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, had gradually surrendered control over West Bank towns to the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s in the wake of the Oslo accords. But in the spring of 2002, a year and a half after the Palestinian uprising began, Israeli forces responded to a flurry of Palestinian suicide attacks inside Israel by reoccupying most major Palestinian towns, from which many of the attacks had been launched.
Jericho is the first of five towns that Israel agreed to return, in phases, to Palestinian control under an agreement reached by Abbas and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel at a Feb. 8 summit in Egypt. Palestinians hope the easing of travel and reduced Israeli presence could boost tourism in Jericho, although Israel said it would continue to prevent its citizens from entering the town.
But snags kept delaying the power transfer in Jericho, the only West Bank town where the uprising never quite took hold, suggesting that Israeli withdrawals from places where the intifadah raged would be slow and painstaking.
Yesterday's accord ''does not fully satisfy our goals, but it is one step in the right direction," said Sami Muslam, the governor of Jericho and its environs. ''It is not a withdrawal, because there was no Israeli army presence in the city."
Talks on the transfer of Jericho got mired in debate over the definition of redeployment. Since Israeli troops had made only sporadic forays into Jericho, Palestinians took a withdrawal to mean that economy-crippling restrictions on mobility throughout the area would be lifted, allowing residents to travel freely to Ramallah and other West Bank towns.
Many of Jericho's 14,000 residents make their living from farming or tourism, meaning their livelihoods depend on their ability to get produce out and visitors in.
But while Abbas and Sharon announced a mutual cease-fire at the summit last month, Israeli officials say Palestinian gunmen are still plotting bombings and other violence. As a result, Israel has been slow to remove the scores of checkpoints scattered across the West Bank, where soldiers have occasionally nabbed would-be suicide bombers.
According to the agreement finally reached on Jericho, Israel will further ease travel restrictions around the town within a month, officials on both sides said.
''The success of the process depends on the commitment of the Palestinian security forces to a joint fight against terrorist activity," the Israeli army spokesman said in a statement.
In Jericho yesterday, residents watched an Israeli crane lift cement blocks from a checkpoint. Palestinian police directed traffic or stood on street corners, making themselves more visible than they have been in years, residents said.
Some residents embraced the handover. Shaaban Issaidi, who sells produce at the main open-air market, said he looked forward to customers arriving from outside Jericho, especially Israeli Arabs.
''We used to sell between 10,000 and 15,000 vegetable boxes a day. Now we only sell 4,000 boxes," Issaidi said, referring to the combined transactions of all the vendors.
Others said the years of encirclement by Israeli troops had driven Jericho's unemployment to more than 50 percent and killed the town's economy.
''It is an empty city. We live in a big prison," said Ahmed Abu Zeid, a Palestinian security officer dressed in civilian clothes and sipping coffee at a café.
Hundreds of Jericho residents had worked at the Oasis Casino, which drew many Israelis and tourists before the intifadah.
The casino shut down in October 2000 after Israel barred its citizens from entering Palestinian towns. Israeli officials said the ban would remain in place for now.
Another unresolved dispute is the fate of two Palestinian prisoners held in Jericho, guarded by British and American jailers, under a three-year-old agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
The two, Ahmed Sa'adat and Fuad Shubaki, were handed over by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a 2002 deal that prompted Israel to lift the siege on his Ramallah compound. Sa'adat is suspected of masterminding the 2001 assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister, Rehavam Ze'evi. Shubaki is believed to have organized a large shipment of arms from Iran in early 2002.
Abbas said this week he would free the two men, but Israeli officials said that would violate the agreement. Both sides said yesterday the issue was still in dispute.
Globe correspondent Sa'id Ghazali contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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