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Mideast Bracing For Storm Of Violence
JERUSALEM, April 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Despite a U.S. plea for calm, Israelis and Palestinians traded fire overnight in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with each side on Tuesday blaming the other for the latest surge of violence, reports the Washington Post.
Clashes flared between Israeli troops and stone throwers in al-Khader west of Bethlehem, leaving two Palestinian teenagers lightly wounded by rubber-coated steel bullets.
Residents said the army made loudspeaker announcements telling residents of Bethlehem's Aida camp and the area around Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish holy site, to evacuate their homes. The army had no immediate comment.
An Israeli soldier was shot dead during an intense firefight in the biblical town of Bethlehem, and a Palestinian activist was killed in a helicopter rocket assault as he drove his pickup truck in the Gaza Strip, in a pair of lethal attacks reports MSNBC.
In office for less than a month, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been confronted with a sharp upsurge in fighting that has seen 18 people killed since last Monday, one of the bloodiest weeks since the Palestinian revolt erupted in late September.
An Israeli cabinet minister said the conflict that has left hopes for a Middle East peace deal in tatters required a political rather than military solution.
"Make no mistake. This will not be solved by snipers or by anti-tank missiles from helicopters. This will end through talking," Matan Vilnai, minister for science and culture, told army radio.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke with both Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after a fresh wave of fighting on Monday, while U.S. President George W. Bush said Washington was "very engaged in the Middle East and will remain so."
However, Bush reiterated that his administration would not be as involved in the Middle East peace process as that of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and that the matter had to be settled by the parties involved themselves.
Sharon defended his new "gloves-off" policy and reiterated Israel's call for the Palestinians to cease the violence.
"The Palestinian Authority is not working to prevent terror attacks as it is committed to do, which does not leave Israel any choice but to carry out the necessary actions for fighting terror and for defending its civilians and soldiers," a diplomatic source quoted him as telling Powell.
Powell told Arafat that "violence must be reduced so that negotiations can be resumed," a Palestinian official said.
Israel sent two helicopter gun ships to assassinate an Islamic Jihad activist in the Gaza Strip on Monday, who it alleged was planning a massive attack, triggering warnings of revenge from the Palestinian movement.
The rival Hamas also vowed to pursue its fight against Israel, saying "cowardly assassinations ... will not break the will to pursue the jihad [holy struggle] and the armed resistance in the face of the tyrannical enemy."
Two Israeli soldiers were killed by suspected Palestinian snipers in separate West Bank attacks, one of them was shot during a fierce gun battle in Bethlehem on Monday that triggered a thundering Israeli shelling of a hotel and nearby refugee camps.
"This is just the beginning. The waves of violence washing over the territories only hint at the tornado that will blow between us and the Palestinians," Yediot Aharonot newspaper columnist Alex Fishman warned in an analysis.
Army chief General Shaul Mofaz said Israel was ready to resume peace talks immediately but accused the Palestinians of using "violence and terror" to achieve their goals.
"We say that we are prepared to negotiate with you immediately, in order to be able to co-exist peacefully…this cannot happen until the terrorism stops, and until we can give Israeli citizens a feeling of security and peace," he told a military ceremony.
The two sides last met at the negotiating table in Egypt in January, when the former government of Ehud Barak was in power, but no formal agreement was reached.
Palestinian preventative security chief for the Gaza Strip, Muhammad Dahlan, said Sharon's government was carrying out a military offensive to undermine the Palestinian leadership, reports the Post.
"The Israelis make the Palestinian security forces a target simply because they represent the Palestinian Authority, even if these forces do not take part in the clashes," Dahlan told a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Dahlan, also added that there would be no resumption even of security contacts with Israel without foreign observers.
"Security contacts are cut off and they will only resume within a political framework on condition that there is an international witness to the meetings," he said at the conference.
Israel continued to take action against Arafat's elite Force 17, which it holds responsible for anti-Israel attacks, razing an outpost in an area of the Gaza Strip under full Palestinian control, a Palestinian security source said.
It followed Israel's air strikes against Force 17 positions in Gaza City and Ramallah with helicopter gun ships six days ago and the abduction of Force 17 members in a West Bank raid overnight Saturday.
Three of them were released after being cleared of "terrorist" involvement, Sharon's office said Tuesday.
On the diplomatic front, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Bush vowed at their meeting Monday to cooperate on forging Middle East peace, while Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Tuesday that Washington would remain Israel's preferred peace broker.
Both Mubarak and the Palestinians have chided Bush for taking more of a backseat role in the turbulent Middle East than his predecessor Bill Clinton.
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