RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) — Palestinian officials insisted on Saturday that their forces were improving security in the West Bank despite a shootout the day before in which two Israelis and a Palestinian were killed.
"We have succeeded after several hours in arresting two members of the group behind the attack in Hebron yesterday," Palestinian information minister Riyad al-Malki told AFP.
"Now we have two men and we arrested them with weapons they stole from the Israeli soldiers," he said, adding that the weapons had been turned over to the Israelis and the investigation was continuing.
On Friday, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on three Jewish settlers hiking near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, killing two of them.
The two settlers -- who were later identified as off-duty soldiers -- fired back at the car, killing one Palestinian.
The attack was the deadliest on settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the start of this year, which has seen a sharp fall in attacks against Israelis.
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad visited Israeli President Shimon Peres to inform him of the capture of the two suspects and condemn the killing, Israeli army radio reported.
"Any loss of life is one too many and we are striving on both sides to put an end to this vicious circle of bloodshed," Fayyad told reporters after the meeting north of Tel Aviv.
Earlier on Saturday, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations submitted a letter to the world body accusing Palestinian security forces of not doing enough to crack down on armed groups.
But Malki said the shooting incident -- for which no group has yet taken responsibility -- might have been more criminal than political, and that the arrests proved Palestinian security forces could impose law and order.
"This is a very big achievement and proves we can take over responsibility in all the Palestinian territories," he said.
Later, Israeli security forces seized two wounded suspects from a Hebron hospital where they had been admitted for treatment, Israeli television reported.
Last month, Israel and the Palestinians relaunched Middle East peace talks after a seven-year halt, with Israel pledging to freeze settlements and Palestinians vowing to improve security in the West Bank.
The Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs said Israel was unfairly blaming the Palestinians for the attack, insisting that they were living up to commitments they gave at last month's conference at Annapolis near Washington.
"What happened today in Bethlehem is proof that the government is making every effort to provide law and order in Palestinian lands," Ashraf al-Ajrami told AFP.
Earlier Saturday, Palestinian security forces arrested three Israelis, one of them an off-duty soldier carrying an M-16, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, which is off-limits to Israelis.
The three were later handed over to the Israeli army for questioning.
Hours earlier Palestinian forces arrested more than a dozen members of the Islamist Hamas movement in raids across the West Bank as part of a crackdown on the group which seized power in the Gaza Strip in June.
Ajrami said however that Palestinian forces cannot guarantee security across the West Bank because they can only operate in certain areas.
"Until now, Israel has not permitted the government to operate in all parts of the West Bank to break up armed cells, even though the government has made real progress in this area," Ajrami said.
The Palestinians are planning to beef up their forces with the import of 50 Russian-made armoured personnel carriers in the coming month, interior minister Abdelrazak Yehya told AFP.
Israel held up the delivery of the vehicles earlier this month when the Palestinians asked that the vehicles be armed with heavy machine-guns.
Yehya would not specify how the vehicles would be armed, but said they would "only be used to transport soldiers".
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
