Israel agreed to free 250 prisoners from the Fatah movement of Mahmoud Abbas yesterday in an effort to support the weakened Palestinian President’s emergency Government in the West Bank.

It also announced that the Arab League would send its first ever delegation to Israel on Thursday, a mark of the pan-Arab organisation’s concern at the deterioration in the situation since a de facto civil war erupted last month between Fatah and Hamas, its Islamist rival, in the Gaza Strip.

“We have to do our utmost as the situation on the ground is very bad,” Abdul-Ilah el-Khatib, the Jordanian Foreign Minister, told The Times. “We need to go beyond the business as usual and to move forward the peace process.”

Mr Abbas, whose Fatah security forces were crushed by Hamas fighters in Gaza last month, is facing a tough challenge in reciprocating Israel’s modest trust-building measures. Gunmen from his own ranks are refusing to heed his decree that all West Bank militias must disarm.

The Times joined five members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – an armed wing of Fatah – in a tiny room cluttered with pistols and assault rifles in the old city centre of Nablus, in the northern West Bank. They laughed at the idea of surrendering their arms to Palestinian police.

“We’d ask them to give us their weapons,” said Mahdi Abu Ghazali, the head of the cell, which calls itself Fares al-Layl, or Knights of the Night. “Every night the Israeli soldiers come looking for us in Nablus, from midnight until 5am. If they are not here, then there’s a drone flying overheard collecting intelligence.” Israel has started making cautious gestures – such as the release of some of the estimated 10,000 Palestinians in its jails, and the transfer of more than £50 million in frozen tax revenue – to shore up Mr Abbas’s Government.

In return Mr Abbas has pledged to crack down on armed factions in the West Bank. While al-Aqsa fighters say that they support their President, they insist they cannot give up their weapons while Israel is still raiding.

Making the situation even more difficult for the President, Alaa Sanaqra, the head of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for Nablus, said that he and other leaders were quitting the Palestinian security forces, citing “internal differences” with the Palestinian leadership. Abu Ghazali said that his cell had stopped attacking Israel and the Jewish settlements that dot the West Bank two years ago. But his group still fights regularly with Israeli forces who stage incursions into Nablus.

His group would relinquish their weapons only if Israel issued concrete guarantees that it would not arrest them or enter Palestinian-run areas, and if it released more prisoners and removed checkpoints. However, Israel is unlikely to take such steps while Palestinian gunmen are still at large.

So the fighting goes on, even as both sides talk of trust-building measures. In Nablus old town, four of Abu Ghazali’s men fought an intense battle last week in the underground ruins of the Roman and Byzantine cities that Nablus stands on. The gunmen have charted the interconnecting chambers, semi-collapsed tunnels and crawl spaces in which they can seek refuge underground when the Israeli Army storms in.

For two nights they were surrounded in a series of blacked-out tiny rooms as the Israeli soldiers hurled grenades, sent in dogs equipped with night-vision cameras and used gas to flush them out. The al-Aqsa fighters – skinny gunmen in their early twenties – retreated deeper behind the dank stone walls of their underground refuge. Often the Israeli troops were only a few feet away, drilling into walls with pneumatic drills to find them.

“We had no food, no drink. We couldn’t see a thing and we could only whisper at each other,” said Sheikh, a lean 22-year-old who declined to use his real name. “We were praying. But sometimes we would just start laughing at the situation.”

Towards the end of the second night, he said that the soldiers started pumping a yellow gas in to the chamber where they were hiding. The four men started vomiting, lying face down to be able to breathe.

As his comrades collapsed Sheikh decided that he did not want to be taken alive: he struggled from his hiding place with his gun in his hand, ready to die in a hail of bullets.

“I was afraid. I was thinking of my mother, crying,” he said. But as he emerged from his tunnel, he bumped into an Israeli soldier who tried to grab him. Sheikh shoved him away and ducked round a wall. Both men started firing their weapons blindly around the corner, barely five paces from each other. Then the Palestinian gunman fled.

When the Israelis left he was surprised to find his comrades alive. They suspected that he had been captured and was trying to lure them out. They said that they would shoot him if he came in. Only when Palestinian medics gathered outside and told them that the Israelis had gone would they come out.

The choreography

— Israel is seeking to bolster the moderate, pro-Western Palestinian emergency Government in the West Bank after Fatah’s defeat by Hamas Islamists in Gaza

— It has agreed to unfreeze hundreds of millions of dollars in tax and customs revenue that were held back after Hamas won elections early in 2006

— Israel plans to free 250 Fatah members in jail as a goodwill gesture. Palestinians want to be consulted in who is freed Israel may also start opening some of the military checkpoints it operates across the West Bank

— In return President Abbas has promised to disarm the various armed factions in the areas he still controls

— His Government has also said it will curb the activities of Hamas-funded charities in the West Bank

Source: Times archive

Iran has secretly developed a third uranium enrichment facility to act as a back-up if Israel or the United States attacks its two established nuclear reactors, according to an Iranian general who defected to America. Ali Resa Asgari, a general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and former Deputy Defence Minister, told American intelligence officers that in addition to the two known plants at Bushehr and Arak, Iran is secretly enhancing more uranium at a weapons facility in Netanz.

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