Israel leaves Gaza town

DESPITE a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, Israel relaxed its military grip yesterday in an area of the Gaza Strip where the first steps could be taken to fulfil a US-backed peace plan.

US President George W Bush telephoned new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas yesterday and their first conversation was "friendly and hopeful," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

"The president reiterated his vision ... for two states living side by side in peace and the president reiterated the absolute need for all parties to fight terror," Mr Fleischer told reporters.

The call lasted about 15 minutes. "The president stressed the need for all parties to take concrete steps and called for co-operative efforts between all Arab parties and Israel to create the conditions for peace and security in the Middle East. He reiterated his commitment to the security of the state of Israel."

Witnesses said the Israeli army pulled out of Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza town it swept into last Thursday in what it described as an open-ended operation to prevent militants firing homemade rockets into southern Israel. Beit Hanoun is in a border area that Israel said it wanted to hand over to Palestinian security control as a proving ground for Mr Abbas's commitment to the peace "road map" and its requirement to disarm and arrest gunmen.

A meeting between Mr Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday yielded no agreement on implementing the peace plan and its series of reciprocal, confidence-building measures meant to spawn a Palestinian state in 2005. Aides to Mr Sharon said he planned to meet Mr Abbas again.

Showing their defiance of Mr Abbas and opposition to negotiated co-existence with Israel, militants from the West Bank have mounted five suicide bombings against Israelis in three days. The latest attack on a shopping mall in northern Israel on Monday killed three people.

It was carried out by a 19-year-old Palestinian woman. Palestinian security sources said Hiba Darghmeh, a student of English literature at a West Bank university, was a devout Muslim whose militant brother had been in Israeli custody for a year. They said militants from Arafat's Fatah faction recruited her for the mission, and the radical Islamic Jihad group had armed her with an explosives belt.