The Al Aqsa Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Fateh movement, on Thursday claimed responsibility for the killing of a Jewish settler and the wounding of her husband near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
"One of our groups opened fire with automatic weapons on a car [belonging to] settlers east of Bethlehem, at the Tekoa intersection. The car and its passengers were hit directly," said a statement signed by Al Aqsa Brigades received by AFP in Beirut.
The statement said the attack was in "direct and immediate response to Israeli bombardments yesterday (Wednesday) in Hebron, Nablus and Gaza."
Meanwhile, another group close to Fateh, the Popular Army Front-Return Battalions, claimed responsibility for a roadside blast near the Jewish settlement of Oranit that the Israeli army said wounded two settlers, one of them seriously.
On Wednesday, the Palestinian news agency, WAFA, said that Israeli tanks shelled residential areas in the West Bank city of Hebron, killing a Palestinian man and injuring five others. The victim’s identity was not immediately known.
Earlier, nine Palestinians were wounded when Israeli soldiers attacked them near a checkpoint in Ramallah, said WAFA.
In another incident, at least 40 grenades were hurled at an Israeli army position in Rafah on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, AFP said.
Dore Gold, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was quick to criticize Palestinian President Yasser Arafat for failing to observe the ceasefire, AFP said.
This "blood attack proves that international pressures brought to bear on Yasser Arafat were not sufficient in that (Arafat) is not applying the ceasefire that he committed himself to respecting," Gold told AFP.
Asked about an eventual meeting between Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Gold said "such a meeting would be hard to organize while the violence continues on the ground."
Earlier Thursday, Peres praised Arafat's efforts in bringing down the violence.
"Arafat has prevented attacks in the past few hours, and we have appreciated his intervention in this prevention," Peres said without giving any details of the attacks that were averted.
"Palestinians have been making serious efforts, but Arafat has his own problems with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah, which cannot be sorted out at the press of a button," he said, cited by the agency.
The truce declared by Arafat and Israel on Tuesday was pushed through under pressure from the United States, which is trying to end the Middle East conflict and draw Arab countries into an anti-terrorism coalition.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell celebrated what he called a "significant" decrease in violence.
"Earlier today I spoke to both Chairman Arafat and to (Israeli) Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon and expressed my satisfaction that the first 24 hours of the arrangement that they made yesterday has resulted in a significant decrease in the amount of violence," he told reporters.
"Let us all hope that we can keep this process now moving forward and it will result in an early meeting between Foreign Minister (Shimon) Peres and Chairman Arafat," he said.
Despite the drop in violence, a spokesman for Ariel Sharon said the 48 hours of calm demanded by Israel's premier before he allows the meeting with Arafat to negotiate a disengagement on the ground had not yet started.
"We are not happy about the shootings," Avi Pazner said.
In spite of Israeli doubts, the Jewish state's tanks pulled out of positions they had taken up during recent retaliatory incursions into Palestinian-held territory.
Skepticism was also voiced by the West Bank leader of Fateh movement, Marwan Barghouthi.
"It's unlikely that this call for a ceasefire will stand, since it is not based on a political agreement," he told AFP.
"If it is to succeed, it should also include calls that it will lead to an end of the Israeli occupation."
Israeli public television, meanwhile, said Israeli and Palestinian officials could hold a meeting on security issues Thursday, but a senior Palestinian official said the Arafat-Peres talks would have to come first.
A lasting truce would allow the internationally-backed Mitchell plan, a blueprint for finding a way out of the crisis, to be put into effect.
The plan, named after former US senator George Mitchell, calls for a six-week cooling off period accompanied by confidence-building measures and a freeze on Jewish settlement-building in the Palestinian territories.
US President George W. Bush has said the ceasefire offered a "glimmer of hope" in the conflict, which has left more than 800 people dead, most of them Palestinians.
But even as the world community hailed the move and urged both sides to build upon it, the two main Palestinian Islamic groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, vowed to press ahead with their struggle against Israeli occupation.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began in September 2000.
AFP's latest death tally comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 624 Palestinians, and 167 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
According to Amnesty International, Israeli soldiers have killed roughly 100 Palestinian children, nearly all in situations where the safety of the occupation forces was in no immediate danger – Albawaba.com
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