By Mohammed Assadi RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel-Razak al-Yahya accused Israel on Tuesday of hampering efforts to keep order in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian forces began last year executing a plan devised by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's Western-backed government to impose law and order and crack down on armed militias. Yahya told reporters Israeli raids into the West Bank were intended to weaken the Palestinian Authority. "(Israel) wanted to make the security plan fail after an initial success," he said in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "Each time the Israelis enter Nablus, they sabotage our security efforts. We have protested to them a million times but without any success." Israeli troops flooded Nablus last week and conducted house-to-house searches, detaining at least six Palestinians. A Fayyad aide said he had protested to Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak about the raid in a meeting on Tuesday. "Fayyad reiterated the Palestinian Authority's rejection (of) such raids and demanded an immediate halt to them and to any Israeli measures that obstruct the Palestinian security efforts," the aide said. An aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Abbas also protested to Olmert in person on Tuesday. The Islamist movement Hamas ousted Abbas's forces from the Gaza Strip in a brief but bloody civil war in June. Abbas's secular Fatah movement holds sway in the West Bank. Yahya said the raids, which Israel says are needed to arrest militants and thwart attacks, would not stop his security services enforcing the law. "We cannot go backwards," he said. Palestinian Authority deployments in the West Bank cities of Nablus, Tulkarm and Bethlehem has brought calm, with suspects arrested and weapons seized from armed militias. In July Abbas's government secured a deal with Israel to stop hunting dozens of Fatah militants in return for their handing over their guns to the Palestinian Authority and to pledge not to launch future attacks against Israel. Yahya said all members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's armed wing, had surrendered their weapons and now he wanted Israel to promise to stop hunting them. Yahya, a tough ex-guerrilla chief, said Fayyad's government had made security its priority after Israel had used the chaotic security situation in Palestinian areas as a pretext not to make headway in the political track. He said the plan was beginning to bear fruit. (Additional reporting by Wafa Amr; Writing by Mohammed Assadi; Editing by Ori Lewis)
An ultra-Orthodox Jew walks past Israeli border police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem January 8, 2008. U.S. President George W. Bush leaves on Tuesday for Israel and the West ...
