Israelis and Palestinians slated to resume talks

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Palestinian and Israeli officials were to meet after sundown Saturday, resuming talks that were repeatedly postponed and then canceled after the Israelis said they needed more time to prepare and because of renewed Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said the meeting would be held in Jerusalem but said progress depended on Israeli willingness to pull troops out of the West Bank.

"I believe if Israel is really serious in the resumption of the political process they have first to immediately withdraw from the Palestinian territories," he told reporters. Because of the Jewish Sabbath, Israeli officials were not available to confirm the meeting.

A Palestinian human rights group, meanwhile, asked Israel's Supreme Court to block any deportation of relatives of West Bank suicide bombers to the Gaza Strip, saying the move violates international law.

Attorney Hader Shkirat, director of the Law Society, a Palestinian human rights organization, said he filed a motion Friday as a preventive measure after Israeli forces destroyed the homes of two suspects in this week's attacks and arrested 21 of their relatives.

After the arrests, Israeli officials said the Israeli attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, had determined that relatives of West Bank suicide bombers could be deported to Gaza -- but only if they had a direct link to acts of terrorism.

A Justice Ministry spokesman, Jonathan Beker, said deportations could occur "for example, if they (family members) encouraged the bomber to join the terrorist organization or even to volunteer for the suicide attack, or were involved in his recruitment."

Israel made the arrests after back-to-back attacks this week left 10 Israelis and two foreign workers dead -- the first attacks in nearly a month.

Early Saturday, a car exploded in Jaffa, an Arab-Jewish neighborhood south of downtown Tel Aviv, killing the driver, police said. The circumstances of the blast were unclear. The car was near the Hamadia mosque when it exploded.

In Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip Israeli soldiers backed by tanks and bulldozers entered the refugee camp and demolished a metal workshop and damaged a house, clashing briefly with Palestinian gunmen, according to Palestinian residents. No injuries were reported.