“The U.S. and I myself, is committed to the security of Israel,” Bush said without similar pledges to ensure the safety of Palestinians

Additional Reporting By Mustafa el-Sawwaf, IOL Correspondent

WEST BANK, June 5 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Ten Palestinians were injured and several houses demolished in a fresh incursion by Israeli occupation forces on the West Bank and Gaza Strip Wednesday, June 4, hours after a U.S.-led summit in Jordan’s Aqaba promised better future for the Palestinians and an end to more than a century of occupation and daily aggressions.

In the summit, attended by U.S. President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged to improve the living conditions of Palestinians by easing restrictions on their areas long imposed since the September 2001 Intifada against Israeli occupation.

Israeli forces pushed into the West Bank towns of Nablus and Jenin, triggering clashes with inhabitants that left more than 10 Palestinians injured, witnesses told IslamOnline.net.

In Al-Khalil (Hebron), another West Bank city, Israeli forces demolished three houses of resistance fighters in southern area and imposed a curfew on the area, eyewitnesses told IOL.

Two Palestinians were abducted in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, and 11 teenagers wounded by Israeli fire as they threw stones to protest the army's incursion into two refugee camps on the West Bank, Palestinian security sources added.

To the north, four youths were moderately wounded as they were throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in Nablus' refugee camp of Balata, Palestinian medical sources said.

And another seven teenagers sustained injuries in similar circumstances in the refugee camp of Faraa, south of the northern West Bank town of Jenin.

In a brief incursion into the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah town, near the Egyptian border, Israeli tanks backed by bulldozers demolished four houses before pulling out, Palestinian security sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

An Israeli military source said that there had been mortar fire from Rafah in the direction of the nearby Jewish settlement at Gush Katif.

Palestinian Teenager Dead

Israeli continues its incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas

Meanwhile, a Palestinian teenager who was critically wounded by Israeli gunfire last week died of his wounds Thursday in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian medics said.

Ibrahim Abu Habla, 15, was shot in the eye by Israeli occupation troops who responded with live bullets to stone-throwing youths during an incursion into the nearby city of Tulkarem on May 28, the sources said.

His death brought to 3,278 the number of people killed since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinians Intifada against Israeli occupation, including 2,476 Palestinians and 742 Israelis.

The three-way Aqaba summit formally launched the international "road map" for Middle East peace which includes the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his Israeli counterpart saw a glimmer of hope for peace in the Wednesday meeting, but Palestinians were rather skeptical of what tangible steps lying behind smiles and shake hands in the get-together given Bush’s reiteration that “the U.S. and I myself, is committed to the security of Israel,” without similar pledges to ensure the safety of Palestinians.