Talks continue on final details of Hebron pact

ISRAEL and the Palestinians were still at odds last night over final details of the Hebron redeployment

ISRAEL and the Palestinians were still at odds last night over final details of the Hebron redeployment. However, the Israeli army already has pulled almost all of its troops out of what will soon become the "Palestinian sector" of the city.

The remaining soldiers can be removed within hours, if not minutes, as soon as the completed accord is signed.

Under the terms of the Hebron deal, which was originally supposed to have been implemented last March, about 80 per cent of the West Bank city, home to 100,000 Palestinians, is to come under the overall control of Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The remaining 20 per cent, home to about 450 Jews and 15-20,000 Palestinians, is staying under Israeli occupation for the time being.

The negotiators were still arguing last night over several issues, including the wording of a clause governing the emergency circumstances under which Israeli troops would be allowed to re enter Palestinian run areas.

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But while those talks continued, on the ground the Israeli redeployment has essentially been completed. For several weeks now Israeli troops have hardly been seen patrolling what is to become the Palestinian sector, and now there are only three Israeli permanent positions on that "Palestinian side" - staffed with only a skeleton force of soldiers.

Plainclothes Palestinian security agents have already been deployed 100 blue uniformed policemen are trained and awaiting the signal to move in.

In the city centre, where five small settler enclaves house the 48 Jewish families and a Jewish study centre accommodates 150 full time students, approximately 1,000 soldiers are now on duty more than two, that is, per Jewish resident.

The last few days have seen a steady inflow of military equipment to this sector - new olive green, bullet proof watchtowers, security cameras, extra lighting - giving the area the atmosphere off a sprawling military camp. "We don't want to live in an army base," the settlers's spokesman, Mr Noam Arnon, complained on Wednesday, insisting that Hebron's Jews wanted to live a normal life in the city - a difficult objective considering his characterisation of his Palestinian neighbours as "thousands of armed terrorists who want to kill us".

Israeli security officials say privately that the boosted military presence is designed as much to protect the Palestinians from the Jews as vice versa. The Hebron area settlers are some of the most hardcore of all right wing activists. Their most prominent figure, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who led the first group of settlers into the city a year after Israel captured it from Jordan in the 1967 war, has served jail time for manslaughter, Baruch Goldstein, who carried out the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians at the local Cave of the Patriarchs, lived in the adjacent settlement of Kuyat Arba; and Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin's assassin was a fanatical supporter of Hebron's Jews.

As the talks stagger on, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, is coming under increasing pressure from both sides of the domestic political spectrum. His own right wingers accuse him of reneging on electoral, promises not to "compromise on security" for Hebron's Jews; the Labour led opposition is mocking his protracted renegotiation of the new accord taking shape is less advantageous to Israel than last year's Rabin Arafat deal.