Israelis rescue taxi driver from 'terrorist' abductors

A KIDNAPPED taxi driver freed in an Israeli commando raid was greeted with a street party yesterday and the military said his captors were not backed by major Palestinian militant groups.

The abduction last week of Israeli Eliyahu Goral had raised tensions as Israelis and Palestinians have been working to maintain a fragile ceasefire.

The Israeli army said the kidnappers had no ties to the larger Palestinian militant groups, and probably abducted Mr Goral in hopes of passing him onto those groups. The attempt to move their captive apparently failed. The military, however, insisted the kidnappers were not common criminals.

"We know for sure that the motives for the kidnapping were terrorist ," an Israeli army colonel said. "I've heard there are all kinds of versions about thieves, robbers and so on. These were terrorists," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on a brief visit to Norway, applauded the successful operation. "There is no possibility of compromise with terror," he said.

Mr Goral's release helped reduce fears the ceasefire could collapse, after a Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the fatal stabbing of an Israeli in Tel Aviv and Israel's foreign minister warned Palestinian officials were running out of time to disarm militants.

A Palestinian cabinet minister, meanwhile, said the Palestinian Authority (PA) would not conduct a targeted crackdown on the militant groups but would disarm anyone brandishing or using weapons.

Information minister Nabil Amr said the PA was seeking to convince the militant groups to extend indefinitely the temporary halt to attacks against Israelis.

"We have a plan to transform the ceasefire from a limited one to an indefinite one," he said. The Islamic Jihad and Hamas groups declared a three-month moratorium on attacks, while the Fatah movement headed by Yasser Arafat declared a six-month truce.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a leading figure in Hamas in the Gaza Strip, dismissed the idea as dreams.

"These are illusions," Rantisi said. "If Amr said this I want to tell him that there is no one who can give any inch from the land of Palestine by permanently accepting the existence of Israel," he said.

Mr Goral, 61, arrived unharmed at his Tel Aviv home to find a street party in progress, with neighbours toasting his safe return with champagne and vodka. He had been missing since Friday night, when his taxi was found with its motor running in an Arab neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

Goral said he was kidnapped after he picked up two men, a young woman and a child in Lod, a mixed Jewish-Arab town just east of Tel Aviv.

"They had a girl with them, otherwise I wouldn't have stopped," he said. He said the passengers asked him to take them to Jerusalem and when they arrived, he was ordered at knifepoint to drive to a suburb of the city.

From there, he was taken to the nearby West Bank town of Ramallah and held in a 30-foot deep pit until his release, the army said.

Palestinian sources said the kidnappers had been in touch with militants from the al-Aqsa Brigades a group linked to Fatah and had tried to enlist its help in demanding that Israel, in exchange for Mr Goral, release about 200 Palestinian prisoners.

They said al-Aqsa refused to co-operate with the kidnappers, and PA intelligence chief Tawfiq Tirawi had been in close contact with militants in the West Bank to urge them not to take any measure that could bring down the ceasefire with Israel.