Israel's army said it was lifting its blockade on the encircled West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday as an Egyptian envoy called on the Jewish state to do more to help revive Middle East peace talks.
Jenin has been surrounded for much of a three-year-old conflict. The latest closure was imposed after a truce declared by Palestinian factions collapsed amid further violence in August and forced negotiations to a halt.
The army said the removal of the closure was "in keeping with assessments of the security situation".
Israeli soldiers at checkpoints around the city, scene of heavy fighting in April 2002, said that roadblocks and tanks would be gone by Friday morning.
Jenin's Palestinian governor, Ramadan al-Batta, said the army's decision was made without any security co-ordination with his side and he feared this reflected a new Israeli unilateralism that would marginalise Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has told Palestinians that if they do not stop attacks and enter road-map talks within a few months, Israel will unilaterally draw security boundaries stripping them of some of the land they seek for a viable state.
VIOLENCE AT BARRIER: Palestinians said several more protesters were injured by Israeli rubber bullets on Thursday at the construction site of a huge barrier Israel is building in the West Bank which is expected to form a de facto border if Israel goes it alone.
Israel says the barrier of wire and concrete keeps suicide bombers out of its towns. Palestinians call it a land grab.
After meeting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at his shell-battered headquarters in the West Bank, an Egyptian mediator said he felt encouraged by the former guerrilla leader and now Israel needed to do more.
Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab state to forge a peace treaty with Israel, has been trying to secure a truce from Palestinian factions seen as crucial to salvaging the road map.
"We hope that Israel should exert parallel efforts to those exerted by the Palestinian Authority, by us and by the international community," Osama el-Baz, political adviser to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, told reporters.
Arafat's Palestinian Authority favours a cease-fire.
Hopes of success took another blow on Tuesday when Israeli helicopters launched their first missile strike in more than two months to try to kill a leader of the key Hamas faction. The attack failed but the Islamic group vowed to strike back.
"There is no possibility of talking about a truce," Hamas official Said Siam told Reuters in Gaza on Thursday.
PALESTINIAN KILLED: Yasser Arafat held talks Thursday with a top Egyptian envoy on ways to revive the peace process, as a Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli troops in the West Bank.
Mohammad Jaber Said, 16, was shot overnight as he was throwing stones at soldiers near a road running through the West Bank, Palestinian sources said.
Israeli military sources said some Palestinians had tried to block the road - used by Jewish settlers - with rocks and a metal bar.
Palestinians were also marking the 39th anniversary of Arafat's Fatah movement Thursday.
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