Israel detained more than 130 Palestinians today in a sweep for militants it said would help a violence-hit peace plan but Palestinians condemned as an attempt to sabotage truce efforts.
The raids in Nablus and Hebron, the two largest West Bank cities, added to tensions surrounding faltering moves to implement the US-backed "road map" for ending nearly 33 months of bloodshed and establishing a Palestinian state by 2005.
Mr Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Israel had to pursue militants preparing attacks in the absence of a Palestinian Authority crackdown against them.
"The first purpose of these large-scale arrests is to try to save the road map of peace, to really provide a maintenance operation so that the road map would not disintegrate in front our eyes," Mr Gissin said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has been trying to persuade Hamas and other militant groups to call a temporary truce with Israel to end a cycle of violence that has battered the plan affirmed at a USled summit on June 4th.
Palestinian cabinet minister Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo called the operations in Hebron and Nablus "an attempt to sabotage the understanding with Hamas. Israel does not want a ceasefire."
Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a Hamas leader wounded in an Israeli assassination attempt on June 10th, said: "We are facing a Zionist assault and it is not logical to ask us to accept a truce under these conditions."
Parallel talks between top Israeli and Palestinian security officials ended overnight with no final agreement on a proposed Israeli troop pullback from the northern Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Bethlehem.