Jerusalem, Aug 16: Israel has agreed to hand security control of four West Bank cities to Palestinian authorities by the end of August to push Palestinian militants to honour a truce crucial to peace moves, security sources said. They said any further ''terror attacks'' would scuttle the accord reached by Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan after a weeks-long impasse over how to implement a US-backed ''roadmap'' peace plan. Dahlan's spokesman said yesterday that the meeting had a ''very positive'' outcome against expectations. But militants dismissed the deal as ''worthless'' as Israel had not dropped a policy to hunt them down for previous attacks in a 34-month-old uprising.
A six-week-old unilateral ceasefire declared by militant factions frayed badly this week with two Palestinian suicide bombings avenging continued Israeli Army raids that have killed some wanted militants and netted dozens more.
Whether yesterday's deal would be carried out was uncertain at best as militant group Islamic Jihad threatened retribution ''like an earthquake'' after Israeli troops killed its Hebron commander in a shootout on Thursday after trying to arrest him. An Israeli defence ministry spokeswoman said Mofaz agreed to pull back forces from Jericho and Qalqilya early next week and the larger cities of Ramallah and Tulkarm in about two weeks.
''There are three conditions for this transfer -- that they (Palestinian Police) fight terror, establish an apparatus to neutralise wanted terrorists and that there are no terrorist attacks in this period,'' she said.
The ''roadmap'' peace plan charts reciprocal steps toward a Palestinian state by 2005 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. Stubborn violence and deep mistrust have bogged down the plan since its June launch. Bureau Report