RAMALLAH, August 27 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - As Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said on Wednesday, August 27, he is ready to take action against resistance groups if Israel halted attacks on them, an Israeli official said the army’s assassinations policy would continue unabated.

"I am prepared to implement the law (against activists) on condition Israel stops its attacks," Arafat said in an interview with Reuters carried by Swissinfo.org.

Elaborating on no steps to be taken, Arafat said he would not risk a Palestinian civil war.

Arafat said he had ordered the detention of Hamas and other group leaders earlier in a 35-month-old Intifada against Israeli occupation and will do so again if Israel stopped its aggressions.

"Haven't I arrested Hamas leaders (before)? Haven't I placed some of them under house arrest? I'm not prepared to fuel a Palestinian civil war. But I am prepared to implement the law on condition Israel halts attacks," the Palestinian leader said at his compound where Israeli forces have besieged him for 18 months.

Since the truce was called, Arafat said, Israel had killed at least 19 Palestinians and wounded many others.

"Israel is responsible for the failure of the truce. Israel has not respected the truce and is not committed to peace although we were and are still committed to peace. We have implemented our side of the road map so far but Israel hasn't."

"Isn't the road map binding on Israel too?" he said, in reference to the U.S.-backed blueprint envisaging the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005 after a number of reciprocal confidence-building measures.

"We were in control many times including our success in reaching a cease-fire but it was violated many times in a persistent and rude manner by most Israeli political and military leaders," he said.

He said he had embraced the U.S.-backed "road map" and urged Washington to salvage the peace plan by pressing Israel to cease fire and by sending forces to oversee implementation of confidence-building steps required of each side.

"Otherwise, certainly there is a danger of an explosion that would threaten the entire region," the 74-year-old leader said.

Israeli government accepted the road map only under strong U.S. pressure and after making a number of conditions against an unfettered Palestinian acceptance to commit by its provisions.

"The way out of this (crisis) is to return to the road map. But this requires the deployment of international forces that have the power to implement the roadmap, like the (former) peacekeepers in...Bosnia, Sinai, the Golan. Aren't the Palestinians also humans? Don't they deserve peacekeepers?"

"If the United States wants to preside over these forces, so be it, but this has to be done to stop the deterioration."

He undermined the disagreement with his Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas reportedly rising up on power struggle after the recent plunge back into violence.

"This (talk of power struggle) is...an Israeli media fabrication," Arafat said. "Their (Israeli) objective is to obstruct implementation of the road map. Every day they invent a different story. I give (Abbas) all my effort and backing," said Arafat.

A handcuffed Palestinian man is helped up into an Israeli army truck by another arrested Palestinian

In the meanwhile, Arafat called on Palestinian factions to reinstate their commitment to the ceasefire which was shattered by the assassination of Abu Shanab.

"President Yasser Arafat calls on all groups and parties to commit themselves ... to the ceasefire to give a chance to all peaceful international efforts for the implementation of the roadmap," a statement said.

He called on the factions to make a new commitment to the ceasefire, and on Israel to "stop the war, the killing, the assassinations and daily military escalation".

Arafat’s statements ruffled feathers among Palestinian factions, with a Hamas leader calling them “so dangerous”.

“He is sending a message to (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon that the policy of killing Palestinians bore fruit,” said Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, himself survived an Israeli attempt on his life.

On calls for disarming Palestinian factions, Rantissi told Al-Jazeera that “Palestinians could not lay down their weapons as long as the Palestinian state is not yet established”.

In the meanwhile, an Israeli official said the Israeli army will continue its policy of killing members of Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

"Our liquidation operations are going to continue against everyone implicated in terrorist attacks, in the preparation of attacks or in the firing of rockets," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"No terrorist should expect to benefit from the least impunity, we will continue to act when and where we judge useful, with all means necessary, until the Palestinian Authority decides to fight the terrorists as it is committed to doing.”

But after Arafat’s initiative, Israeli occupation forces continued its incursions into Palestinian areas.

In Ramallah, Israeli army opened fire with rubber-coated bullets after being pelted with stones by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), PFLP followers who had gathered in the West Bank city's main Manara Square to commemorate the second anniversary of PLFP leader Abu Ali Mustafa.

At least two people were injured as clashes broke out in the center of Ramallah after the Israeli army sealed off the offices of the PFLP, witnesses and medical sources said.

Mustafa was killed in an Israeli army raid on August 27, 2001. He is the most prominent Palestinian killed by Israeli forces since the start of the Intifada in September 2000.

The Israeli army also abducted 32 Palestinian activists in a series of overnight raids in the West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli sources said Wednesday.