Israeli tanks shelled a PA base and several homes in the West Bank city of Hebron early on Thursday, as the occupation troops kept tanks poised to strike at autonomous Palestinian towns in Bethlehem.
The new attacks came amid stepped-up Palestinian pressure for international action to stave off a wider catastrophe in the Occupied Territories.
The Palestinian news agency, WAFA, said that Israeli tanks destroyed a building of the Palestinian Presidential Guards Unit, Force 17, as well as several Palestinian homes in the southern part of the Doura area.
A Palestinian child identified as Khaled Ahmed Amr was injured in the attack.
Meanwhile, residents of the Palestinian towns of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, in the Bethlehem area, told AFP that around 25 tanks and armored troop carriers were massed nearby after moving into the area overnight in a fresh Israeli show of force in the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had threatened military intervention in the Bethlehem region following automatic arms fire from Beit Jala towards the Gilo settlement near occupied east Jerusalem on Tuesday.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said on public radio: "There are red lines that nobody may cross. One of them is shooting at Gilo. There will be no more shooting at Gilo."
Sources close to the defense ministry, cited on public radio, said an incursion into Beit Jala had been postponed by commanders on the ground.
They said that an incursion into the town had been postponed for 24 hours, denying the attack was cancelled due to US pressure.
Later Wednesday, Israeli tanks moved into area in the southern Gaza Strip under full Palestinian control and opened fire before withdrawing two hours later, a Palestinian security official told the agency.
Israelis and Palestinians had exchanged gunfire in nearby Rafah for most of the day, military sources and witnesses said, cited by the agency.
Meanwhile, there was intense diplomatic activity on the Palestinian side Wednesday.
In Cairo, it was announced that the emergency meeting of the council of Arab foreign ministers requested by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would be held in the coming days.
"The ministerial meeting will discuss what measures to take at the Arab and international levels [to face] Israeli practices," Arab League chief Amr Moussa said after a meeting with Arafat, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and his Jordanian counterpart Abdel Ilah Al Khatib.
The four-way meeting came on the heels of a meeting of Arab information ministers aimed at coordinating Arab media strategy and countering what they called Israeli "disinformation."
In another development, Haaretz reported that despite the opposition of the United States and Israel to the convening of the Security Council to discuss the conflict in the region, the body is expected to meet Friday - or possibly Monday - for this purpose.
On the agenda will be the situation in the Occupied Territories, "including Jerusalem," as well as the renewed Palestinian request to discuss the deployment of international observers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it said.
Arab representatives at the UN, including Palestinian observer Nasser Al Kidwa, held meetings Wednesday with members of the Security Council and reportedly brought a great deal of pressure to bear on the Colombian ambassador to the UN, who currently holds the council's presidency.
The Arab initiative, which was organized at the behest of the Palestinians, comes in response to Monday's Israeli operation in Jenin, in which Israel penetrated into the heart of a Palestinian city for the first time since the major cities were handed over to the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s.
In a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Kidwa said the council "has the obligation to effectively and immediately intervene to put an end to the present tragic situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem," AFP quoted him as saying.
But Washington said it remained opposed to any UN intervention, insisting only on the goal of moving to full implementation of the Mitchell reports recommendations and moving to that goal as quickly as possible."
For his part, US President George W. Bush reiterated his call for restraint and said "war is avoidable."
"I'm confident that the (Israeli and Palestinian) leaderships will understand that war is avoidable and will work to bring peace. The parties must -- must -- make up their mind that peace is preferable to war," he said.
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 547 Palestinians, and 146 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September - Albawaba.com
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