Ceasefire hopes dashed as Israel kills militant

The Israeli army yesterday shot dead Iyad Sawalha, a senior Palestinian militant it has accused of responsibility for the deaths of 31 Israelis in two suicide bombings. The killing came in the midst of talks between officials of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and militants in Cairo, believed to be aimed at ending attacks on civilians in Israel. Now any chance of a ceasefire may disappear amid revenge attacks for his death.

The Israeli army said Sawalha, an Islamic Jihad commander in Jenin, was killed while resisting arrest, and Palestinian witnesses confirmed that there was a gunfight at his house in the night. But the army has an openly acknowledged policy of assassinating Palestinian militants, and Sawalha may have believed he was fighting for his life. There were disturbing allegations yesterday from a neighbour that Israeli soldiers had threatened to kill Sawalha's wife if he didn't give himself up.

Sawalha took over as Islamic Jihad's local commander in Jenin after the death of Mahmoud Tawalbeh, who died leading the Palestinian resistance to the army's invasion of Jenin in April this year.

Tawalbeh's successor had plenty of blood on his hands, according to the Israeli authorities. They said Sawalha ordered the attack last month in which two Palestinian militants drove a jeep full of explosives up to the side of a packed Israeli bus and detonated it. Fourteen people died in the explosion.

According to the army, Sawalha also ordered an attack in which a suicide bomber detonated explosives on a bus in June, killing 17 people. Although he has been a wanted man for some time, Israeli authorities say they were unable to find him until yesterday.

In the early hours, said Palestinian witnesses, scores of Israeli soldiers began searching the al-Sibat area of Jenin, smashing their way from house to house through the connecting walls. When they pinned Sawalha down in the kitchen of a house, his wife surrendered.

"They told his wife to tell him to come out, I heard her say 'Iyad, please come out, they're threatening to kill me if you don't'," Soha Ekmel, a neighbour who witnessed the army raid, told Associated Press. Sawalha refused, and there was a gun battle. At one point, the militant threw a grenade out at the soldiers.

Questions will be asked over the timing of the killing, which came as officials from Mr Arafat's Fatah organisation and the militant group Hamas were meeting in Cairo. The two sides have refused to disclose the agenda, but Fatah was believed to be trying to get Hamas to agree to stop attacks on civilians inside Israel – though not on soldiers or settlers in the occupied territories. Although Islamic Jihad was not represented at the Cairo talks, in the past it has honoured short-lived ceasefires to which Hamas has agreed.

Provocative Israeli acts, such as the assassinations of militants, have repeatedly coincided with Palestinian ceasefire efforts. When the Israeli military dropped a one-ton bomb on a crowded residential neighbourhood of Gaza, killing nine children as well as the Hamas military commander Salah Shahadeh, European diplomats went so far as to tell reporters they had been on the verge of getting Hamas to agree to a ceasefire.

There is growing opposition to attacks inside Israel among many Palestinians, but it is not clear whether a ceasefire could hold for long. Many militants in Hamas and Islamic Jihad still favour attacks on Israeli civilians. Most attacks are organised by local leaders, who may not listen to vague, conditional orders from above.