Organs from a Palestinian boy saved the lives of three Israeli children in a rare and complicated series of transplant operations, a hospital spokesman said yesterday.

The organs used in the transplants carried out on Tuesday at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, came from an 11-year-old Palestinian boy who was declared brain dead a week after falling from the roof of his house.

The boy, Kaher Uda, was from the West Bank and the youngest of 14 children.

Doctors at the hospital carried out a rare operation known as a domino transplant. The boy's lungs and heart were transplanted into a 13-year old girl suffering from the lung-destroying disease cystic fibrosis, who also received a new heart even though her own heart was healthy.

"Giving her a new heart greatly increases the chances of success for the lung transplant,'' said hospital spokeswoman Vered Kvitel.

The girl's healthy heart was then transplanted into an 11-year old girl. Kvitel said it was the first time that a transplant had been conducted from a living donor in Israel.

Kaher's kidneys were transplanted into an 11-year old boy who suffered from a liver disease that also affected his kidneys. All three recipients were Israeli Arabs.

"We supported the whole process that is both happy and sad,'' Raed Uda, the brother of the donor, told the Yediot Aharonot daily.

"It did not matter to us who received the organs, Jews or Arabs, it is not important. The important thing is that we saved the lives of children,'' Uda was quoted as saying.

For the first time in months, the uncertainty surrounding Israel and Palestine's peace process took a back seat in the region's headlines to the incredible events surrounding the children's transplants.

In another development, Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs were scheduled to meet on Wednesday night to discuss Israel's promised withdrawal from two more Palestinian towns, both sides said.

The meeting came as Palestinians decried -- and Israelis applauded --the outcome of Tuesday's White House meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, in which the US president backed off from overt criticism of a West Bank security fence and called on Palestinians to dismantle militant groups.

Israel's Defence Ministry and Palestinian security sources confirmed the meeting between Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan and Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz.

Palestinians sources said Palestinian prisoner releases by Israel and the dismantling of Israeli settlement outposts would be discussed.

Dahlan said in Gaza City that he also would call on Israel to allow Palestinians from Gaza to visit the West Bank and to let Palestinians living abroad visit their relatives in the region.

Israel withdrew from part of the Gaza Strip and from the West Bank town of Bethlehem a month ago, and is supposed to pull out of more Palestinian areas occupied during the recent fighting as part of the US-backed "roadmap'' peace plan.

The two new West Bank towns to be handed over to Palestinian control have not been named, but Israeli media have said they are likely to be Qalqilya and Jericho -- relatively quiet towns with little Israeli military presence.

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