Israeli troops opened fire Thursday on Palestinian farm workers at the Bureij refugee in the northern Gaza Strip early Thursday, killing one. Meanwhile, a Palestinian man died of his injuries from Israeli fire received in a clash in the Gaza Strip earlier this month.
Atef Wahdan, 40, was shot dead as he was harvesting oranges in an area which lies near the border with Israel, said AFP.
The commander of Palestinian border guards in the northern Gaza Strip, Colonel Mohammad Rajab, told AFP that the soldiers had shot without apparent reason on the farm workers.
An Israeli military source said the army had fired on a Palestinian who was trying to cross into Israel.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim Abu Waily, 20, died earlier in the day. He was hit in the chest by a bullet at Khan Yunes on April 7 and was evacuated to a Cairo hospital.
Late Wednesday, four Palestinians, including three members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh movement and a teenage boy, were killed in an explosion near the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt.
A Fateh official described it as an "assassination."
According to a Rafah hospital source, the ambulance team found the body of Yasser Hamdan al-Debbas, 14, who was thrown several meters (yards) by the explosion in the "buffer zone" on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, said AFP.
Senior Gaza police officer, Ghazi Jabali charged in a statement to Abu Dhabi satellite channel that Israel is behind the attack.
He said that the security men headed for the site were a suspected object was reported, and as they tried to detonate the bomb, it exploded killing the three and the Dabbas, while the injured were all civilians.
Jabali said that the bomb was remotely controlled by a helicopter or an observation tower. AFP's sources repeated the same account of the event.
Al Jazeerah satellite TV's correspondent in Gaza reported that another account of the story was that the three martyrs were heading for a military operation when the Israeli activated the bomb, killing them.
But a spokesman for the Israeli military said the army was not aware of any incident at Rafah Wednesday evening, said AFP.
In Hebron, a curfew was imposed after settlers and Israeli soldiers clashed with the Palestinian residents. Reports said that the settlers attacked and damaged shops in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood claiming that shootings were initiated against them from the overlooking area.
A Palestinian child was wounded in the head by a stone, while others were beaten by dozens of settlers who attacked the Palestinians after a fire fight between Israeli soldiers and armed men in the Abu Sneineh, witnesses told AFP.
The Israeli army arrested a number of Palestinian youths and imposed a curfew on the divided flashpoint city, they added.
Jewish settlers regularly resort to acts of anti-Palestinian vandalism in Hebron, particularly since the March 26 death of a settler baby killed by a Palestinian sniper firing from Abu Sneinah, said AFP.
Under an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, Israel pulled out of 80 percent of Hebron but still controls an enclave around the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where some 400 extremist Jewish settlers live, surrounded by 120,000 Palestinians.
Elsewhere, witnesses said Palestinians shot at the Jewish settlement of Gilo south of Jerusalem late Wednesday afternoon, prompting retaliatory machine-gun fire and shelling by Israeli troops on the nearby Palestinian village of Beit Jala.
No-one was reported injured, according to the agency.
EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT, ISRAELI FM TO HOLD TALKS IN CAIRO SUNDAY
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced Wednesday he and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres would hold talks in Egypt this weekend on a joint Middle East peace proposal he has put forward along with Jordan.
"I'll see him I think on Sunday, he will come to us on Sunday," he told journalists in a media conference with his Romanian counterpart, Ion Iliescu, according to AFP.
Mubarak's announcement put to rest doubts over the meeting that had been raised when Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, who was accompanying Mubarak on a brief visit to Romania's capital, said he had received no notification of Peres's visit.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had said in Israeli media reports Wednesday that he was sending Peres to Cairo and Amman to discuss the Jordanian-Egyptian initiative, which seeks to end seven months of violence in the Palestinian territories, said reports.
A Peres spokesman was quoted by the agency as saying that the foreign minister had no other travel plans ahead of a departure for a US visit on Monday.
"I hope that Sharon could understand that the situation is difficult and peace will never be reached unless steps to moving forward (are taken), to lift the siege and try to make the Palestinian people feel that there is hope that they could live like human beings," Mubarak said.
Meanwhile, Jordan's Foreign Minister said that he has not been informed whether Peres will visit Jordan. He added that Jordan is still waiting a response from Israel on the initiative, Abu Dhabi TV quoted him as saying.
Palestinians expressed hope Wednesday over the plan to end seven months of bloodshed, even while Israel sealed off the Palestinian territories, fearing attacks during independence day festivities.
"This might be a crack in the wall of darkness that has surrounded this situation," Palestinian minister for international cooperation Nabil Shaath told reporters in Stockholm, quoted by AFP.
In another sign of cooling tensions, Sharon said Arafat had ordered a halt to mortar fire on Israeli targets and proposed a joint inquiry into the attacks.
Sharon said in an interview with Israeli public radio that Arafat had telephoned the prime minister's son, Omri, after the army said three mortar shells fell on a Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
"Following that conversation ... Arafat took measures against the firing," Sharon said.
US GIVES MILD SCOLDING TO ISRAEL FOR LATEST CLOSURE OF PALESTINIAN AREAS
The United States on Wednesday gave Israel a mild scolding for its decision to seal off the Palestinian territories, saying it would add to the economic malaise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reported AFP.
"We urge the Israelis to ease economic pressure on the Palestinians and it is a fact that closure places some pressure on the Palestinians," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
He declined to comment further on the closures which Israel, fearing attacks during its independence day celebrations on Wednesday and Thursday, announced late Tuesday after a spate of bombings.
Israeli authorities closed all routes in and out of the occupied territories, preventing Palestinians who have jobs in Israel from getting to work.
The restrictions, which came into force as Israel remembered the 19,000 servicemen and women who have fallen in defense of the state, will not be lifted until Friday morning.
Hamas has vowed to step up attacks on Israeli targets during the celebrations.
SPAIN'S PIQUE CALLS ON BOTH ISRAEL, PALESTINIANS TO END VIOLENCE
Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara met Wednesday in Damascus with Spanish counterpart Josep Pique and discussed "the policy of aggression and escalation pursued by Israel," the official SANA news agency reported.
During their meeting, Pique expressed "Spain's desire to strengthen relations with Syria on the occasion of the important visit that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is due to make to Europe," on May 2, the agency said, cited by AFP.
Pique arrived in Damascus as part of a regional tour, and merely said to the press after his meeting with Shara that he will be meeting President Assad Thursday.
Spain said at the start of Pique's tour that its objective was "to get all the parties concerned to sit down at the negotiating table" to discuss the Middle East conflict.
Spain hosted the Israeli-Arab peace conference in Madrid in 1991.
Assad is ue in Madrid on May 2 to inaugurate an exhibition the following day in Cordoba with King Juan Carlos on the Khalifs, entitled "from Damascus to Cordoba."
It will be Assad's first visit to a western country since his accession to the presidency in July 2000, one month after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad.
Earlier in Beirut Wednesday, Pique condemned Wednesday the "disproportionate" use of force by Israel to suppress the Palestinian uprising, adding that the situation in the Palestinian territories was "unacceptable."
He was speaking on his arrival in Beirut from Jordan, where he had taken both Israel and the Palestinians to task for the continuing violence between them, and called on both sides to bring it to an end - Albawaba.com
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