Israeli occupation forces killed three Palestinian resistance fighters and a civilian during incursions Saturday, while Sharon thumbed his nose at international efforts to defuse the crisis, which has seen 13 Palestinians and one Israeli killed in two days.
The latest victims were two in Tulkarem and one in Qalqilya, according to Abu Dhabi satellite channel's correspondent. Later, reports said a civilian was also shot dead.
On Friday, six Palestinians were killed by occupation troops or died under other circumstances as a result of Israeli inursions. These included a pregnant woman in the village of Al Khader near Bethlehem, who was stopped for hours at an Israeli checkpoint while on her way to hospital for delivery.
The woman had heart problems, and was reportedly shouting for help, but the Israeli soldiers ignored her, said the Abu Dhabi station's reporter.
Meanwhile, Israel ignored international appeals for restraint Saturday, confirming it had launched two overnight incursions into the West Bank, said AFP, which confirmed the death toll.
The United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia were scrambling to defuse the situation in a flurry of diplomatic activity after fresh violence in which Israeli tanks stormed into the Palestinian town of Bethlehem.
Israeli tanks entered the West Bank towns of Tulkarem and Qalqiliya early Saturday, the latest in a series of military operations in the occupied territories since the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in a Jerusalem hotel on Wednesday.
However, Palestinians attacked the Jewish settlement of Gilo after Israel assassianted three Fateh leaders on Thursday.
Israeli troops shot dead two members of the Palestinian security forces and wounded another in the autonomous Palestinian town of Tulkarem, while a Palestinian civilian was killed as more troops penetrated Qalqiliya, another Palestinian-controlled town in the northern West Bank, according to the agency.
The latest killings brought the overall death toll for the year-old Intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, to 894, the overwhelming majority of them Palestinians.
On Saturday morning, the Israeli army confirmed the Qalqiliya and Tulkarem incursions.
"Following events of recent days, Israeli forces encircled Tulkarem and Qalqilya, and took possession of the headquarters of the Palestinian security forces in the latter place," it said in a statement, adding that its forces also destroyed "positions from which firing had taken place recently against Israeli targets."
The army said the ensuing clashes had "caused no injuries in Israeli ranks," and added that "several Palestinian suspects were arrested during the operation."
According to sources, there are 12,000 Palestinians under arrest for resisting the occupation.
The stepped-up military offensives came despite strong signals of irritation from Israel's main ally, Washington, which has been increasingly concerned with stopping other Mideast conflicts as it conducts its campaign in Afghanistan, for fear it could unhinge fragile Arab support for its anti-terror coalition.
The United States called Friday for an immediate end to Israeli incursions in the Palestinian-controlled territories, charging they did nothing but "complicate" an already difficult situation.
"Israeli entries into Palestinian-controlled areas are not helpful, complicate the situation and should be halted," a State Department official requesting anonymity said.
Meanwhile, Moscow, a co-sponsor with Washington of the faltering Middle East peace process, urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to put an end to the heightened "violence" which has wracked the region for over a year.
The diplomatic statements were accompanied by a rush of envoys to the region and the hasty arrangement of meetings aimed at bringing Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will meet Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in New York on Sunday, Annan's spokesman announced.
An Israeli embassy source in Washington said the meeting between the two Nobel Peace Prize winners would be followed on Tuesday by talks between Peres and his US counterpart Colin Powell in Washington.
The European Union urged parties to the Middle East conflict to relaunch peace efforts and said it was dispatching foreign policy chief Javier Solana to the area, while Moscow also announced it was sending an envoy to the region.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, telephoned Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to discuss ways of halting the escalating conflict, said a senior advisor to the Palestinian leader, Nabil Abu Rudeina.
The Palestinian leadership said Friday that it wanted the international community to help restart political and security dialogue with Israel despite the deadly violence of the past several days.
In Shanghai, Bush faced further calls for US involvement in the Middle East when he met Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who said the anti-terror campaign could not be separated from the "feeling of frustration and anger" caused in the Muslim world by the Palestinian issue, AFP continued.
"I explained to him the need to remove the causes of terrorism and I singled out the problem in Palestine as the most important cause," the Malaysian leader said Saturday ahead of a Pacific Rim summit in the Chinese city - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
