A tense calm hung over the Palestinian territories on Thursday after the failure of a US attempt to broker a ceasefire agreement to bring a halt to a week of deadly street-battles.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was flying home from Paris instead of joining Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Egypt where an agreement to end the bloodshed had been expected to be signed.
Violent clashes raged until late at night in several parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a day that cost the lives of seven people including a young boy, but no incidents were reported early Thursday morning.
However Israeli radio quoted chief of police Yehuda Wilk as saying he had information that mass riots were being planned for Thursday and Friday in Jerusalem and elsewhere.
The militant Islamic movement Hamas, which is violently opposed to the Israel-Palestinian peace process, earlier in the week had called for an intensification of the uprising "to defend the al-Aqsa mosque."
A visit a week ago by Israeli right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the compound housing Al-Aqsa, the third holiest place in Islam that sits atop the vestiges of Judaism's most sacred shrine, unleashed the wave of unrest.
Residents of the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Tulkarem said electricity had been cut overnight for several hours after Israeli fire on power stations in the areas.
Israeli radio also reported that power was cut overnight in the Jewish settlement of Morag in the southern Gaza Strip as a result of Palestinian fire and had not been restored by early morning.
In Paris, Israel blamed Arafat for the failure of the Paris talks and warned of an escalation of the bloody clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians -- the worst violence in the area for four years that has cost 72 lives.
"Arafat refused to sign the text of the agreement which was prepared by both sides and Prime Minister Barak did not see any point in going to Egypt since the negotiations on the security issues have reached an impasse," an Israeli official said.
Israeli officials had initially announced after a dramatic day of negotiations between Arafat and Barak that agreement on a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forcates from flashpoint areas. But there was no deal on an international commission of inquiry into the violence that Arafat wanted included.
"He (Arafat) committed himself three times to an immediate halt to violence without conditions -- to us, to the Americans and to French President Jacques Chirac," said Transport and Tourism Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak who attended the Paris talks.
"On our side, it has been agreed that we will take all necessary measures to enable that to happen and the army will pull back to positions occupied before the outbreak of hostilities," he added.
But Palestinian spokeswoman in Paris Leila Shahid said the Palestinians had never said they would sign anything in Paris.
"Barak is making up reasons for not going to Egypt," she said.
A planned joint security committee required no signature she said, adding, "The only problem is the international committee of inquiry.” – JERUSALEM (AFP)
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