Israeli tanks early Friday shelled PA areas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank as Palestinians said that Israel was the biggest obstacle to achieve peace in the region.
The Palestinian news agency, WAFA, reported that Israeli tanks opened their fire on residential areas in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, but reporting no injuries.
Several houses in western Khan Yunis were fired on, said the agency, adding that several tanks were stationed in the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.
Earlier, the agency said that the occupation troops made an incursion into Al Aroob refugee camp in the West Bank city of Hebron and opened fire on residential areas there. No injuries were reported.
In the meantime, an aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said that Israeli politics are "the biggest obstacle to peace" in the Middle East.
"Definitely, it is the politics of Israel that are the true obstacle to peace and aim to torpedo planned meetings" between Palestinians and Israelis, Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
He was responding to a charge by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who accused Arafat of being the main obstacle to peace.
"Sharon tries to torpedo all the international efforts to restore calm to the region," Abu Rudeina said.
The Israeli premier had told Russian reporters in Moscow earlier Thursday that Arafat "has chosen the strategy of terror.
"Today Arafat is an obstacle to peace, and the fact that he won the Nobel Peace prize is only a curiosity of history," Sharon said.
Earlier Thursday, an Israeli soldier was shot dead and his female comrade seriously wounded on the Israeli side of the Green Line north of the West Bank town of Tulkarem, military sources said.
The killing followed a failed Israeli attempt in Tulkarem to assassinate a Palestinian activist, whose arrest it had unsuccessfully demanded, in a helicopter raid that killed two others.
The Israeli soldiers were shot from a vehicle in Tulkarem as they crossed the Green Line into Israel following an Israeli incursion into the town, said AFP and Haaretz newspaper.
Both were taken to Hillel Yaffa Hospital in city of Hadera.
The soldier's death brought to 769 the number of people killed since the Palestinian Intifada or uprising started last September 28, including 590 Palestinians and 157 Israelis, according to AFP estimates.
The two Palestinian men killed earlier Thursday by missiles at their vehicle from helicopter gunships were activists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Fateh movement.
The Israeli army confirmed the strike, saying the target was Tulkarem Fatah official Raad Mohammad Raaf al-Karami, whom it blamed for several anti-Israeli attacks and who Palestinian sources said managed to jump from the car in time – Albawaba.com
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