Israel arrests Palestinians in village raids

Israeli forces raided several villages overnight and arrested 26 Palestinians suspected of involvement in terror attacks, the Israeli military said today.

US envoy William Burns met Arafat yesterday while, outside, an Israeli army bulldozer crushed cars.

Burns peeped outside briefly to see what the Israelis were up to. No progress was reported in the talks.

Israel is insisting that Arafat hand over several people in his compound, including the suspected assassins of an Israeli Cabinet minister and the mastermind of a seaborne Palestinian arms shipment intercepted by Israel in January.

Arafat has refused, and reports from his embattled compound indicated that the was taking pre-emptive legal action, putting the suspected assassins on trial in a makeshift court, using Palestinian police in the compound as judges.

The Israeli daily Haaretz said another policeman was appointed defence lawyer.

Under interim peace accords, Palestinians are to extradite suspects to Israel, unless they put them on trial in Palestinian courts.

Since the accords were signed in 1994, the Palestinians have never extradited terror suspects to Israel.

At a second flashpoint, the Church of the Nativity, gunfire broke out last night and white smoke rose in the vicinity of the adjacent Manger Square, possibly from smoke grenades.

Each side accused the other of firing first.

Palestinians said a meeting was set with Israelis for today to discuss how to end the standoff. The Israelis had no comment. An earlier session was cancelled; each side blamed the other.

About 200 gunmen fled into the church ahead of invading Israeli forces on April 2. Israel is demanding that they surrender.

‘‘The situation is getting steadily worse,’’ Canon Andrew White, an envoy sent by the Anglican Church, told The Associated Press. ‘‘There is no food. The people are getting water from a well. The sanitary conditions are terrible. Several people are sick and some are injured.’’

White said the 35 priests and nuns in the church were staying on voluntarily to ensure no harm came to the shrine, built over Jesus’ traditional birth grotto.

The Palestinians say they won’t begin truce talks until Israeli forces have left all Palestinian-run areas in the West Bank.

Israel says it will only lift the blockades in Ramallah and Bethlehem once gunmen holed up in the two compounds surrender.

In violence yesterday, seven Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed.

In a clash in the northern West Bank, a soldier was killed along with two Hamas militants, the army said.

One of the two, Taher Nasser, 28, was a leader of the Hamas military wing in the Nablus area. Israel says he was wanted attacks including a Dec. 12 ambush of a bus in the West Bank that killed 10 Israelis.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car and killed Marwan Zalloum, commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade militia in the city, residents said.

Another man was also killed. The Israeli military confirmed that helicopters targeted a Zalloum and said he organized suicide bomb attacks, other bombings and hundreds of gunfire attacks.

And less than a mile from Arafat’s compound, masked Palestinians opened fire on three suspected Palestinian informers in a crowded downtown square in Ramallah, leaving the men writhing in agony.

One later died. The gunmen said they were from Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Arafat’s Fatah movement.

In east Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted Palestinian families from two homes after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the land belongs to Jews. However, police prevented Israelis from taking over the buildings.

Israeli troops have left most Palestinian cities in the West Bank after an incursion that lasted more than three weeks, but in their wake, Palestinian Authority ministries are in shambles.

Israeli troops went through ministries, ripping out computer hard drives, seizing documents and trashing offices that were not related to Israel’s search for militants, Palestinians said.

Israelis took medical records of thousands of patients from the Health Ministry, collected the student database from a computer at the Education Ministry and headed home with the car registration list from the Transportation Ministry, Palestinians said.