A top Palestinian security figure said today that Israel had agreed "in principle" to a partial withdrawal from the West Bank.
The move involves an apparent withdrawal from West Bank cities and will result in the Palestinian Authority having policing rights in these areas.
Mr Mohammed Dahlan, a confidant of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said "Israel has agreed in principle to renew the understandings that were reached when Abbas was prime minister," in July 2003.
The partial withdrawal comes only days after Israel seized large tracts of Jerusalem land owned by Palestinian residents of the West Bank.
The land was taken after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government decided several months ago to enforce a long-dormant law that allows Israel to seize lands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 Mideast war that followed Israel's creation.
The new policy, first reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz, could affect hundreds of Palestinians who own property in Jerusalem and is sure to raise the stakes in the stormy battle over the city, which Israel and the Palestinians both claim as their capital.
According to documents from Israel's Finance and Justice ministries, the land was transferred to the "Custodian of Absentee Property ," a body formed by a 1950 law that allowed the seizure of property of Palestinians who had left Israel during the 1948 war.
Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip - home to some four million Palestinians - during the 1967 Six Day War.