Israel agrees to hand over West Bank cities to Palestinians

ISRAEL agreed yesterday to hand security control over the West Bank cities of Jericho and Qalqilya to Palestinians next week in what it called a step to firm up a ceasefire and advance a US-backed peace plan.

Reached at high-level security talks, the deal also offered the Palestinians the chance to regain control over two larger cities, Ramallah and Tulkarm, but Israeli security sources said further terror attacks would scuttle handovers.

The accord appeared to be aimed at salvaging a six-week-old truce that has frayed badly this week after two Palestinian suicide bombings in retaliation for continued Israeli army raids that have killed wanted militants.

Whether the deal would go forth was uncertain at best as militant group Islamic Jihad threatened revenge "like an earthquake" after Israeli troops killed its Hebron commander in a shootout on Thursday.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan struck the deal at unannounced talks their second meeting in as many days.

"They agreed Israel will transfer security control of Qalqilya and Jericho to the Palestinian side next week," a senior Israeli security source said. "And the Palestinians will submit a plan to Israel for reassuming security responsibility over Ramallah and Tulkarm," he said.

"Israel will consider this plan over the next 10 days or so and give its answer. The whole process will depend on whether we have no terror attacks during this period," he said.

The unilateral ceasefire proclaimed by militant factions under intense pressure from reformist Palestinian authorities have markedly reduced but not halted violence.

Palestinian officials were demanding Israel turn over Ramallah, where President Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas are based, to prove goodwill on the peace plan.

They had earlier spurned offers of Qalqilya and Jericho, noting the first was ringed by a controversial new Israeli security wall and the other largely quiet and in local hands during a 34-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence.

The road map charts reciprocal confidence-building steps towards a Palestinian state by 2005 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel committed itself under the road map peace plan to transfer occupied West Bank cities back to interim Palestinian authorities, who ran them until the uprising broke out in 2000.

The Israeli army returned the West Bank city of Bethlehem and wider parts of Gaza Strip to Palestinian control last month.

Earlier yesterday, Israel freed 73 Palestinian prisoners in what it called a gesture to the road map after a three-day delay caused by the two suicide bombings that killed two Israelis.

Palestinian officials brushed off the release, saying the 73 had been jailed for petty crimes.