Kidnapped taxi driver is rescued; Palestinian involvement unclear

Israel says time is running out for Palestinian militant groups to disarm.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A kidnapped Israeli taxi-driver who was freed in a midnight commando raid was greeted with a street party today, as speculation grew that his captors were common criminals rather than Palestinian militants.
The abduction last week of 61-year-old Eliyahu Goral had raised tensions as Israelis and Palestinians have been working to maintain a fragile cease-fire declared June 29.
The Israeli army said today that the kidnappers' ties to Palestinian terrorists were "unclear." Israel TV reported they were criminals trying to pass their captive on to militants, but no group agreed to take Goral from them.
Goral's release helped reduce fears the cease-fire could collapse after a Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the fatal stabbing of an Israeli in Tel Aviv and Israel's foreign minister warned that Palestinian officials were running out of time to disarm militants.
Goral arrived unharmed at his Tel Aviv home in the early hours of this morning to find a street party in progress, with neighbors toasting his safe return with champagne and vodka.
He had been missing since Friday night, when his taxi was found with its motor running in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem. Goral said he was kidnapped after he picked up two men, a young woman and a child in Lod, a mixed Jewish-Arab town just east of Tel Aviv.
"They had a little girl with them, otherwise I wouldn't have stopped," Goral said. He said the passengers asked him to take them to Jerusalem and when they arrived, he was ordered at knifepoint to drive to an Arab suburb of the city.
From there, he was taken to the nearby West Bank town of Ramallah and held in a 30-foot pit until his release, the army said in a statement.
About the kidnappers
The army said the kidnappers had aimed to win the release of jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti and 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Media reports said they also asked for money.
In the West Bank village of Beit Rima, the parents of one of the alleged kidnappers, Ahmed Hajaj, said their son was a construction worker and they were unaware of him engaging in any political activity.
The kidnapping did not appear to be a professional operation. The abductors, who were armed only with a knife, issued no public demands or claims of responsibility. The Haaretz newspaper, citing police officials, reported on its Web site today that the captors sounded confused in negotiations with Israeli security forces.
The military said the break in the case came on Saturday night, when the woman kidnapper, Shirin Halil, was arrested and provided information that led security forces to another two gang members and later to the place where Goral was being kept.
When elite commandos stormed the hideout late Tuesday, Goral was being guarded by a lone, unarmed kidnapper who tried to escape but was captured. Authorities also arrested an unarmed guard standing outside the building, but the extent of his connection to the abduction was unclear, the army said. No shots were fired and there were no injured, the military said.
Israeli impatience
The kidnapping and rescue came as Israel is voicing increasing impatience with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas' reluctance to forcibly disarm militant groups. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom warned Tuesday that if the Palestinian Authority didn't move on the issue soon, "the whole thing's going to blow up in our face."
Shalom said Israel and the Palestinians had an informal understanding that the Palestinians would have some three weeks after the cease-fire started to begin dismantling the militant groups, as required by a U.S.-backed plan that calls for an end to 33 months of violence and leads through three stages to creation of a Palestinian state in 2005.
"Those three weeks end this weekend," he told Army Radio. "There have been a few signs of activity, but there's not the sort of action that's required."
The unilateral Palestinian truce has led to a significant drop in violence, allowing implementation of some of the initial steps, but there have been sporadic incidents.
A Bulgarian worker mistaken for an Israeli was shot dead the day after the truce started. An Israeli woman was killed by a suicide bomber while watching television in her home last week, and in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, a 24-year-old Israeli was stabbed to death on the seaside promenade in Tel Aviv.
A statement posted on the Internet site of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades -- a group affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement -- claimed responsibility for the attack. Although the truce includes Fatah, Al Aqsa is loosely organized and leaders of some branches have refused to abide by the cease-fire.
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