Ebb And Flow

Israeli troops are moving like the tide in the West Bank, completing a pullout from Jenin while moving back into Qalqilya early Friday, according to witnesses.

The activity comes after President Bush declared Thursday that Israel was on schedule to withdraw from Palestinian territories.

Israel Radio reported forces were posted on the outskirts of Jenin and were allowing residents to search for relatives in a devastated refugee camp. A U.N. envoy said the incursion caused "colossal suffering."

The withdrawal winds up a three-week operation that included a bloody battle in the camp. The Israeli military had no immediate comment, but military commanders had said earlier that the withdrawal would be completed on Friday.

Brig. Gen. Eyal Schlein, the Israeli army's Jenin division commander, said Thursday that his forces had destroyed the "infrastructure — explosive labs, organization heads, and also terrorists," But he told Israel TV, "The attacks will continue — we haven't achieved any cease-fire."

Israeli tanks thrust into Qalqilya early on Friday, a West Bank city Israeli forces had withdrawn from last week under U.S. pressure, Palestinian witnesses said.

They said tanks and armored vehicles moved in from two directions and sporadic gunfire was heard.

An Israeli army spokeswoman declined comment, saying, "We're not specifying the deployment of our forces."

The army pulled out of Qalqilya and the neighboring city of Tulkarm on April 9 after Washington demanded Israel start its withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas which it invaded on March 29 after a wave of suicide bombings against Israelis. But forces had kept both cities encircled.

Palestinian witnesses and officials also said tanks rolled into the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, where two men were killed by Israeli gunfire.

On Thursday, President Bush said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was keeping his promise and was on schedule to withdraw from Palestinian territories.

"He gave me a timetable and he met the timetable," Mr. Bush said after meeting with his foreign policy team at the White House.

The president dismissed assessments that Secretary of State Colin Powell's Mideast mission, which ended Wednesday without a cease-fire, had failed, and said the United States would continue to pursue a truce.

"This is a part of the world where killing had been going on for a long, long time," said Mr. Bush, "and one trip by the secretary of state is not going to prevent that from happening."

Two weeks after telling Israel to withdraw its troops and 12 days after saying the action should come "without delay," Mr. Bush said he understood why Israeli troops were still in Ramallah and Bethlehem. And the president said he accepted Sharon's assurances that Israel will soon pull out of Jenin, the refugee camp that a U.N. envoy has called "horrifying beyond belief" after Israeli assaults.

"History will show that they've responded," Mr. Bush said of the Israelis.

Powell's deputy for the Mideast, William Burns, arrived in Cairo Thursday to follow up on the weeklong Powell trip, saying the first priority was to complete the Israeli withdrawal.

That would be followed by security consultations between the Israelis and Palestinians, he said. CIA Director George Tenet would come to the area soon, probably next week, to try to arrange the talks, officials in Washington said.

Meanwhile, U.N. Mideast envoy Terje Roed-Larsen toured the devastated refugee camp in Jenin Thursday. He said some 300 buildings were destroyed and 2,000 people were left homeless in the Israeli operation to capture or kill armed militants.

"Not any objective can justify such action, with colossal suffering" to civilians, said Roed-Larsen, walking in a blue flak jacket over a broad swathe of pulverized concrete where hundreds of people once lived.

Residents found the remains of two bodies and said one of them apparently was of Mahmoud Tawalbeh, the regional leader of Islamic Jihad who admitted sending suicide bombers to Israel, among them his younger brother.

So far, 30 bodies have been found in Jenin. The Palestinians accuse Israel of a massacre in the camp, but Israel says fewer than 100 people were killed, most of them militants. It lost 23 soldiers in the operation.

Another 35 decomposing bodies were buried in Nablus when Israel lifted a curfew for three hours.

Israel said it captured Husam Ataf Ali Badran, a leader of the Hamas militant organization who the army said was responsible for the deaths of more than 100 Israelis in some of the worst suicide bombings in the last year.

Badran was arrested in Beit Hassan, east of Nablus. Witnesses said Israeli helicopters fired missiles and machine guns at an isolated house in a field of orange trees. Israel Radio said three others were killed in the attack.

Among the attacks attributed to Badran was the bombing of a Jewish Passover celebration in Netanya on March 27 which triggered the largest Israeli military operation in two decades. An army statement said his capture "is a significant blow" to Hamas.

In Ramallah, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat received a visit from Jordan's foreign minister and got a checkup from his neurologist, Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, who proclaimed him in good health.

Arafat "is in high spirits, although his compound has been turned into a battlefield," Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said after returning to Amman.

Sharon told Powell the troops would complete their withdrawal from occupied towns by the end of the week, except for the siege around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, where Israel says wanted men are holed up.

In Bethlehem, a meeting to negotiate a peaceful evacuation of the 250 people in the church, including many gunmen and about 50 clergymen, was canceled, said Mayor Hanna Nasser.

Powell has described the siege of the church and the isolation of Arafat in Ramallah as key obstacles.

During a visit to a hospital Thursday, Sharon repeated Israel's willingness to take part in a regional peace conference.

"When we will reach a cease-fire we, of course, will be happy to enter a peace process with a coalition, a coalition of peace with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and perhaps Morocco and the Palestinians. That's not the situation today but I hope we will reach this situation," Sharon said.

He also said "Israel cannot accept international forces here," although he previously has suggested he would allow U.S. observers to be stationed in the area.

But Muasher said talk of a conference was premature. "There will be no benefits from such a conference before the total Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian cities," he said after meeting Arafat in his shell-shattered office.