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Palestinians Fight Each Other to Honor Ceasefire with Israel
JERUSALEM, June 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In the first such incident in the nearly nine-month-old cycle of violence, a Palestinian child was killed when residents of the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah attempted to prevent other Palestinians from breaching a ceasefire with the Israel occupation forces, which came into effect three days ago.
While Palestinians were apparently working to honor the ceasefire, eight Palestinians had been injured by Israeli fire in different incidents, news agencies reported.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and ultra-rightist Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were holding talks Saturday night in Jerusalem in an attempt to bolster the fragile Mideast truce, as violence erupted in the Gaza Strip.
Soliman Al-Masri was killed and three other Palestinians from Rafah, including a doctor, were injured in the Tel el-Sultan neighborhood, when residents tried to stop a group of masked men from firing on a nearby Israeli position, a Palestinian security official said.
Orders have been given to arrest Palestinians described as "outlaws" for attacking Israeli soldiers "in violation of orders by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat," the same sources added.
Masri's death, the 612th since Israeli started a violent campaign against the Intifada on September 28, seemed to echo comments by Arafat after a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, saying that despite the three-day-old ceasefire agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians, "nothing had changed on the ground."
Even so, a senior Palestinian official said the two sides would meet Sunday to begin preparing a timetable for Israel to lift its crippling blockade on the Palestinian territories.
Annan flew into Ramallah on the final leg of a Middle East tour aimed at bolstering the U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
Arafat said he had told Annan "Israeli soldiers are not implementing the orders of their political leaders and are carrying out their military activities and aggression. We are disciplined, and we have shown restraint in implementing the ceasefire, and we hope the other side will do the same".
But the Israeli army issued a statement saying it was honoring its ceasefire commitments.
Sharon's spokesman Avi Pazner also lambasted Arafat's implementation of the truce.
Israel "scrupulously respects the ceasefire, which isn't the case of the Palestinian Authority," he told the French news wire AFP.
Arafat repeated a call for a reconvening of the powers that attended the October summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the first international meeting that attempted to bring a halt to the violence.
For his part, Annan reiterated the need for urgent action so that the truce can bring a return to negotiations.
"We need to move ahead very quickly with the peace process; we need to work with the international community to come in with urgent assistance to help the people to rebuild their life, and this has to follow the effective implementation of the Mitchell report," the U.N. chief said.
Israeli public radio reported that said an overnight meeting of Israeli and Palestinian security officials to review the ceasefire had broken up in disagreement, but Colonel Jibril Rajoub, head of preventive security in the West Bank, said the sides agreed to create a joint commission charged with setting a calendar for lifting the blockade and that it will begin work on Sunday.
Rajoub said the commission should complete its work by next Wednesday.
That day marks the end of the first week of the ceasefire.
Under the working plan of the deal brokered by CIA chief George Tenet, senior security officials from the two sides are to meet under U.S. sponsorship to discuss the implementation of the deal, Jibril said.
A statement issued by Sharon's office Friday said Israel had eased restrictions in the occupied territories, opening international crossing points, removing road blocks and blockades of towns and authorizing the resumption of fishing off the Gaza Strip.
Saturday afternoon, Palestinian security services in the Gaza Strip said Israel had stationed two tanks at a road block that had been abandoned two days earlier.
Despite a lack of progress on the ground, the ceasefire got an endorsement from the central committee of Arafat's Fatah faction.
A statement issued after an overnight meeting urged the "grassroots and executives of the movement, and the Palestinian Authority, to consolidate the ceasefire ... and prevent acts that could strike a blow at the higher interests of the Palestinians."
But violence erupted in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli army reported mortar fire and Palestinian medical sources said eight Palestinians had been injured by Israeli fire.
A mortar bomb was fired at the Israeli-Palestinian liaison office near the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in the southern Gaza Strip, causing no injuries, an army spokesman said.
Later Saturday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on seven Palestinian teenagers near the Neve Dekalim settlement in the southern Gaza Strip, hospital sources said.
But the army said it had fired rubber bullets during a turbulent clash in which 150 Palestinian youth burnt tires, threw rocks and tried to scale their military posts' fences.
A Palestinian was also shot near the Karni crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
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