Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is expected to meet with Palestinian Authority Minister of Interior Nasser Yousef today, in an attempt to iron out differences that arose in a meeting on Monday between IDF commanders and their Palestinian counterparts, in preparation for the transfer of Bethlehem to Palestinian security control.

Terror threats emanating from the Kalkilya district, meanwhile, have put on hold plans to transfer that city to PA control, a senior security official told the Jerusalem Post. In recent municipal elections, Hamas activist Wajia Nazel was chosen as mayor. However he is in jail on administrative detention. Some officials described Nazel´s deputy, with whom Israel maintains contact, as being unable to maintain control in the predominantly Hamas city.

Palestinians at Monday´s meeting demanded that security control of Bethlehem be expanded to include a number of villages south of the city, a request that the IDF has so far refused, security officials said. The Palestinians also requested that PA policemen in the city be permitted to carry two weapons, and that their patrol area be defined, the officials said.

Participating in the meeting, which took place at the Bethlehem district coordinating office, were Col. Nitsan Alon, the IDF commander of the Etzion district and Lt. Col. Aviv Feigel, head of the Bethlehem DCO, and Palestinian Gen. Awni Matar.

On June 23, Mofaz instructed the army to prepare for the handover, first of Bethlehem and later Kalkilya. Mofaz has yet to make public his decision on whether to allow the return of some of the 39 terrorists who were exiled to Europe and the Gaza Strip as part of a deal to end the standoff in Bethlehem´s Church of the Nativity in May 2002.

In February, he said that once the Palestinians received security control of Bethlehem, he would permit at least 20 of the exiles to return.

If all the differences are solved then the transfer of the city should go ahead fairly soon, officials said. It will mark the third time that the city has been handed over to PA security control in recent years. The Palestinians gained security control of the city in 2002 and 2003. But after the city became a safe haven for terrorists, the army was forced to re-establish positions in areas surrounding the city to prevent terrorists from entering Jerusalem to launch attacks.

In an unrelated incident in the Gaza Strip, the army removed several caravans from military positions near Morag in southern Gaza on Monday, in preparation for the pending disengagement.

Southern Command officials said the army was currently transferring all non-essential equipment from its posts and bases in the Gaza Strip, but stressed that no change had been made in the deployment of soldiers in the area. (© 1995 - 2005 The Jerusalem Post. 07/05/05)