Israel signaled Saturday that it will maintain its siege on five self-rule Palestinian West Bank towns, as troops pushed into new parts of Ramallah where resistance fighters shot and killed a soldier a day earlier, reported AFP.
Al Jazeera satellite channel said another soldier was injured in the incident.
There were also faint signs the two sides may be steering toward confidence-building measures as Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met for the second time in 24 hours on the Spanish island of Majorca.
The army said, meanwhile, that it was a 19-year-old soldier who was killed when Palestinian gunmen opened fire late Friday on a checkpoint guarding the Beit El Jewish settlement in the Ramallah area. Another soldier was lightly wounded.
After the shooting, an Israeli tank and about a dozen armored vehicles mounted a brief incursion into the nearby Palestinian village of Silwad where a young man was detained, Palestinian witnesses told the agency.
And Saturday morning, military bulldozers tore up a road used in the drive-by shooting, while tanks completely blocked the northern access routes to a nearby refugee camp, according to an AFP correspondent.
The Palestinian official news agency (WAFA) said that the occupation troops opened fire at civilian cars trying to bypass checkpoints on the road from Jenin to Nablus in north West Bank.
Israeli soldiers are also blocking the entrances to several buildings in northern Ramallah, residents told AFP.
The self-rule Palestinian zone of Ramallah-El-Bireh is one of the five areas that remain surrounded by tanks and troops after being invaded following the October 17 assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Israel, which has had several recent high alerts for suicide attack, has justified these operations by saying it is hunting for Zeevi's killers and other militants plotting attacks.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera satellite channel said that the Israelis blocked a march by foreigners in Ramallah, calling for International protection for the Palestinians.
Peres and Arafat are to take part in round-table discussions later Saturday in the town of Formentor, where a forum of Mediterranea states is also being attended by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
Peres and Arafat also met briefly on Friday at dinner, although there are no indications that any substantive discussions have taken place.
In the meantime, there were signs that the relative quiet would not last long, with still no viable peace process in sight despite talks British Prime Minister Tony Blair held Thursday with Sharon and Arafat.
In one incident, four Palestinian homes were destroyed in the southern Gaza Strip during separate Israeli military strikes before dawn, Palestinian security sources said.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered dozens of meters (yards) into self-rule territory in Rafah, on the Egypt border, unleashing heavy machine-gun fire and destroying two homes with reason, the sources added.
And on Friday, a senior Israeli defense official reasserted the Jewish state's right to kill Palestinian militants it suspects of planning attacks and do so despite international criticism.
"We will continue these operations of interception because they permit us to avoid bloody attacks on Israel," Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin Pelossof said in the aftermath of a string of assassinations this week.
She applauded Thursday's killing in a helicopter raid of two members of the Islamic resistance group Hamas near the West Bank town of Tulkarem, whom Israel accused of plotting a "terror" attack – Albawaba.com
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