Clashes and diplomacy vied to gain the upper hand on Wednesday as Israeli troops shot dead three more Palestinians and UN chief Kofi Annan spearheaded diplomatic efforts to halt the violence.
The latest unrest saw two Palestinians killed in separate clashes with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank -- one shot in the stomach with a live bullet, another in the heart.
Their deaths, along with a third Palestinian shot dead in the Gaza Strip, brought to 102 the number of dead since Israeli-Palestinian clashes broke out on September 28.
Three Palestinians and two Jewish settlers were wounded as they traded gunfire near the West Bank town of Nablus following the funeral of Hillel Lieberman, a distant cousin of US vice presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops fired rockets and sent in tanks near a Jewish settlement after two explosions in the path of army patrols, witnesses said.
Two soldiers may have been wounded in one of the explosions near a jeep close to Gush Katif settlement, a military source said. The source said Palestinians unleashed heavy gunfire on the jeep after the explosion.
Against the backdrop of violence, Annan was at the forefront of a high-level diplomatic whirl.
A UN spokesman told AFP late Wednesday that the UN secretary general was expected in Beirut on Thursday for talks with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and a tour of the south of the country.
Annan was to return to the Jewish state later Thursday to continue his shuttle diplomacy.
As the UN chief shuttled between the Israelis and Palestinians, he fell foul of senior Lebanese officials over comments on Saturday's kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers by Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.
He has called the kidnapping in the Shabaa Farms border area a "violation" of UN Security Council resolution 425, which called for Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.
Israel seized the farmlands from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war but the area is claimed by Lebanon with the support of Damascus.
Lebanese House Speaker Nabih Berri warned that Annan's reference to resolution 425 could serve as "cover for any aggression that Israel could carry out against Lebanon" in retaliation for the soldiers' abduction.
In Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad weighed in saying the Lebanese have the right to fight to retake the area.
"The farms of Shebaa are Lebanese lands occupied by Israel. The Lebanese people have the right to fight against the occupiers," he said in a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi.
A further endorsement of Hizbollah action came from the leading authority in Sunni Islam, Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, who backed the kidnapping as a "legitimate" act.
"Since Israel has taken a number of their sons prisoner, they therefore have the right to take prisoner all the Israelis they can catch," he said in a magazine interview.
Also on the diplomatic round, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov also held talks with Assad before winding up a Middle East tour that took in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
But as he left Syria, Ivanov admitted it was premature to talk of success in the peace efforts.
"It's too early to talk of a solution to the crisis. The aim of the efforts and intensive contacts is to return to the situation before September 28," he said, quoted by Syria's official SANA news agency.
And British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook added his weight to the pressure on both sides to secure an agreement, meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and later holding talks with Arafat in Gaza.
In Washington, US President Bill Clinton said he had no immediate plans to visit the Middle East but did not rule it out and said he was engaged in intense telephone diplomacy.
"Secretary (of State Madeleine) Albright or I might go, maybe in time we will both go," Clinton said, adding that he had a long conversation on Wednesday with Annan, at the center of the peace drive on the ground.
Elsewhere a key issue in the diplomatic round was the search for a formula for an inquiry into the past two weeks of clashes, with the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, saying in Cairo that a deal was close.
Egypt joined the Palestinians in refusing to join a peace summit without an international probe into the violence, but Israel warned it would not allow any investigation to turn into a "kangaroo court" dragging on for months -- JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
