Israel is going to slow its planned pullout from five West Bank towns after a day of violence strained an informal cease-fire, and will stop the process altogether if Palestinians don't halt all attacks on Israeli targets, Israeli security officials said Tuesday. 

Despite the warning, Palestinian militants fired three mortar shells at a Jewish settlement in Gaza yesterday, following a barrage on Monday. The shells caused no damage or injuries.

Also yesterday, Israel's attorney general ruled that a secret decision by cabinet ministers to seize Jerusalem land of Palestinians living in the West Bank violates Israeli and international law. The ruling is likely to end the policy, under which hundreds of acres of Palestinian land have been confiscated in recent months.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz met late Monday with Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Dahlan to discuss a handover of West Bank towns to Palestinian security control. Mofaz told Dahlan that Israel would withdraw from one city at a time rather than from all five at once, apparently beginning with Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, German President Horst Koehler arrived in Israel yesterday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of ties between the two countries, which have flourished on the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust.

In the four decades since Israel launched relations with Germany after one of the stormiest debates in the Jewish state's history, Germany has become Israel's No. 1 trading partner in Europe, and stands out as a vocal supporter of Israel, even when European neighbors are critical.

But the rapprochement has not erased deep-seated sensitivities, and some Israeli cabinet ministers and lawmakers said they will boycott Koehler's German-language address to parliament today. Koehler's decision to speak in German has touched raw nerves, even though former German president Johannes Rau addressed the same forum in German in 2000.

"We all know where we started from, and the last 40 years are a big success story," said Christof Blosen, spokesman of the German Embassy in Tel Aviv. "On one hand, we remember the past and on the other we want to strengthen relations in the future." Germany has taken various steps to acknowledge its Holocaust-era crimes, from paying about US$80 billion in compensation to victims, to measuring its ties with Israel on a different scale from other diplomatic relationships.

(China Daily February 2, 2005)