OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, June 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel officially started Sunday building the massive controversial security fence along the Palestinian West Bank aimed at thwarting what they called suicide bombers.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer made a brief inspection tour to launch the first stage of the project, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

The fence has drawn bitter criticism for different reasons from both Palestinians and right-wing Israelis and further raised tensions in the region with all eyes on Washington awaiting the latest U.S. strategy for Middle East peace.

The fence would mostly cordon off the Green Line, the boundary that marks the frontier between Israel and the West Bank, which Israel seized, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East War.

Work began on the first 120 kilometer (75-mile) stretch of the barrier aimed at cutting Israel off from the northern West Bank towns of Jenin, Tulkarem and Qalqilya, reducing the threat to Israel from the area's resistance Palestinian activists.

Work on the barrier between Kfar Salem and Kfar Kassem, which lies about 20 kilometers (13 miles) east of Tel Aviv, is expected to take four to six months and cost up to 600 million shekels (120 million dollars), officials said.

The full montage of fencing, trenches and walls with electronic surveillance equipment is to eventually stretch 350 kilometers (220 miles) along the "green line" between Israel and the West Bank and wind around Occupied Jerusalem.

The National Religious Party, on the influential right-wing of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, demanded it be shut down at a stormy cabinet meeting Sunday.

The NRP fears the fence will become the acknowledged border between Israel and a future Palestinian state, pre-empting eventual negotiations and leaving Jewish settlers on the West Bank isolated, AFP said.

"The construction of this barrier is in total contradiction with decisions taken by the government," senior NRP official Yitzhak Levy told Israeli radio, adding Sharon had pledged to create "buffer zones" and not a fence.

The Palestinians see the security fence as another move towards South Africa's old apartheid system. Experts also doubt how successful it will be in bottling up would-be resistance operations.

“Israel is trying to set new international political borders,” said Khalil Eltafki, head of the map section in the House of the Orient.

"Over the past few days the security establishment has received information of hectic efforts by terrorist organizations to perpetrate suicide terror attacks within the Green Line," the Israeli daily Maariv said Sunday.

In the latest violence, a Palestinian was shot dead Sunday by Israeli troops while trying to cross a checkpoint near the northern West Bank town of Nablus, Palestinian witnesses told AFP.

Hours earlier, a group of soldiers apparently fell into an ambush late Saturday near the Dugit settlement in the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli military officials said.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and four injured, including one seriously, the army said in a statement Sunday. One of the three Palestinian gunmen was reported killed.

The attack was claimed by the military wing of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassem Brigades, in a statement faxed to AFP in Gaza.

With the region still on a low boil, attention was focused on Washington where U.S. officials were working on a new blueprint for Middle East peace, which they say President George W. Bush could deliver as early as Monday.

After weeks of consultations with regional leaders and confusion over mixed U.S. signals, top national security officials were to consult and ready the stage for Bush's comments.

"This weekend will be a time of great introspection, and hopefully we'll have something by Monday if not before. It's just a question of when the president makes up his mind," a senior U.S. official said.

The U.S. leader said Thursday he would map out a road toward the "evolution of a Palestinian state" as the White House acknowledged he was mulling the creation of a provisional entity.

But on Sunday, Sharon told his cabinet that he ruled out the declaration or establishment of a Palestinian state in the near future, Israeli public radio reported.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher criticized Monday the issue of the provisional state.