Palestinians Postpone Elections

Palestinian Cabinet ministers on Sunday postponed elections scheduled for Jan. 20, blaming Israeli occupation of their towns.

The Cabinet endorsed a recommendation by the Palestinian Elections Commission that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat delay the vote until 100 days after Israeli troops withdraw from West Bank towns, but ordered preparations to continue toward holding the election as soon as possible.

"It has become clear to all of us that to hold the elections while all Palestinian cities are under occupation is clearly impossible," Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said after the Cabinet meeting. "But the elections commission will continue its efforts to count and register Palestinians who have the right to vote or become candidates."

Israeli forces have been in control of most main Palestinian towns and cities since the summer, searching for suspected militants and enforcing curfews that have confined hundreds of thousands of people to their homes. The June incursion followed Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel.

Responding to the Palestinian decision to postpone the election, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled said Palestinian violence was to blame. "Israel would like very much to redeploy and leave these areas but can only do so once there is an end or a serious effort to stop terror," he said.

In the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Israeli troops demolished the home of Ziad Abed Elal, accused of being one of the planners of a Friday shooting attack that killed a rabbi driving near a Jewish settlement, the military said.

Also Sunday, the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued a statement saying that agents of the Shin Bet security service last month arrested a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who allegedly worked as local agent for the radical Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization.

The statement said Ahmed Awouteh, received military training from Arafat's Fatah group in Lebanon during the early 1990s and moved to the Gaza Strip with other Fatah activists under Israeli-Palestinian peace accords in 1994.

It said that he was recruited by Hezbollah when he went on the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and on his return to the Gaza Strip gave arms training to activists of the militant Islamic Hamas and telephoned information on Israeli army movements to a Hezbollah handler in Lebanon.

Sharon's office said Awouteh was a flight mechanic employed by the Palestinian Authority at Gaza International Airport.

Officials at the Palestinian airport said they knew of no such employee and would not comment further. The airport has been closed for more than a year after Israeli tanks tore up the runway as a punitive measure.