Israeli government officials refused to comment. A Palestinian human rights group and relatives of Ablah Saadat, 47, said she was arrested as she tried to cross from the West Bank to Jordan, from where she planned fly to Brazil to attend a conference on political prisoners.
Her husband, Ahmed Saadat, is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction whose gunmen assassinated ultra-nationalist Cabinet Minister Rehavam Zeevi, 75, at a Jerusalem hotel on Oct. 17, 2001.
The group said it was avenging its former leader, Mustafa Zibri, who killed in a targeted Israeli rocket attack two months before the Zeevi assassination.
Ahmed Saadat and four others accused of involvement in Zeevi's killing are being held in a Palestinian jail in Jericho, under American and British supervision, as part of a deal that helped end Israel's 34-day siege of Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s West Bank headquarters last spring. Saadat has not been put on trial. The four others were convicted by a makeshift Palestinian court of killing Zeevi.
Ablah Saadat, a mother of four, has no ties to her husband's group, said her mother-in-law, Fathiyah Saadat. She left for the Allenby Bridge crossing over the Jordan River early Tuesday on her way to catch a flight to Brazil, where she was to speak about her husband's imprisonment at a conference on political prisoners.
Her mother-in-law said she received a phone call from her saying she had been detained at the border by Israeli intelligence officers. She hasn't heard from her since then.
Khalida Jarrar, of the Palestinian prisoners rights group Addameer, said Israeli officials told her that Saadat was being held at the Beit El military base near Ramallah.
Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) Thursday, a Palestinian man dressed as a woman was caught trying to cross a military checkpoint shortly after he fired toward a Jewish settlement, military officials said. The man then led troops to where he had stashed an AK-47 assault rifle and hand grenades.
Lt. Col. Yossi, an area commander, said troops searching the area after the shooting found a man dressed "perfectly" in traditional Palestinian women's clothes, complete with Islamic head covering and gloves. Due to Israeli military regulations the officer did not give his last name.
Also Thursday, an Israeli group that tracks Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, released a report showing a disproportionate amount of funds from the Israeli government's budget going to settlements.
More than 200,000 Israelis live in communities dotting the hilltops of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the lands claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
The report by the Israeli group Peace Now says $450 million from the $50 billion state budget in 2001 went to settlements in the West Bank for housing and road construction and development of industrial areas as well as income tax benefits.
Peace Now said settlers, per capita, get $1,500 more in government spending than those living inside Israel proper.
"The policy of the Israeli government is to try to increase the number of settlers beyond the Green Line (between West Bank and Israel) and to make their life and economy better than life in Israel," said Peace Now spokesman Yariv Oppenheimer. "It's a way to achieve a political goal."
Peace now said its data on settlement spending is incomplete because the money is scattered through out the budget.
