An activist with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh faction was found stabbed to death in a shallow grave in the northern West Bank on Monday in a killing the movement said was an Israeli assassination.
The body of Rashid Abu al-Hassan, 34, was discovered by members of Palestinian intelligence forces near the Nur Shams refugee camp on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the northwest of the West Bank, the town's governor said in a statement.
Abu al-Hassan had been missing since Friday, Fateh sources said.
Tulkarem governor Ezzedin Ash-Sharif said a Palestinian man had been arrested for this "ugly crime," but that no further information would be released until the investigation was completed.
Sources close to Fateh said Abu al-Hassan had been "active" during the almost three-month Intifada or Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation and had been on his way to buy weapons when he went missing on Friday.
"This was another assassination by Israel," one Fateh source said.
In recent weeks Israel has frequently directly targeted militants from Fateh as well as the radical Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad that it blames for anti-Israeli attacks.
On Sunday, Fateh member Sameh Malabeh, 27, was killed in a mysterious bomb explosion near the Qalandia refugee camp north of Jerusalem.
Fateh officials blamed Israel for the killing, while Israeli press reports suggested he had been blown up while preparing a bomb.
More than 340 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in the near 12-week cycle of Middle East violence -- NABLUS, West Bank (AFP)
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