gelatik
06.03.02, 01:32
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli-Palestinian violence intensified with a vengeance
as Palestinian rocket, shooting and suicide bombing attacks drew retaliatory
air strikes across the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites).
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (news - web sites) called, ahead of talks on
Tuesday with President Bush (news - web sites), for Washington's immediate
intervention to end 17 months of bloodshed in which more than 1,000 people have
been killed.
A Saudi proposal for Arab-Israeli peace appeared to gain momentum after Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad met Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. The official Saudi
Press Agency said Assad expressed support for the land-for-peace initiative.
But Palestinian revenge attacks loomed after Israel killed two militants in a
helicopter missile strike near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday, an
incident Palestinians described as an assassination.
Palestinian Qassam rockets that hit an Israeli residential area for the first
time, wounding three people in the southern town of Sderot, held out the
prospect of an Israeli thrust into the Gaza Strip to stop such attacks.
Israeli tanks rumbled along the main road leading into the northern Gaza
village of Beit Hanoun early on Wednesday and fired shells at Palestinian
police positions, Palestinian security officials said.
In a coastal area of northern Gaza early on Wednesday, Israeli gunboats fired
at Palestinian posts and a police jeep, wounding three policemen, one
critically, the officials said.
It was not immediately clear if the shooting heralded a large-scale Israeli
push into Palestinian-run areas of Gaza.
"We are still very far away from using our maximal military capabilities, but
unless the Palestinians stop this rampage of violence we will have to step up
our operational decisions as well," Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), told Reuters earlier.
ROUND OF BLOODSHED BEGINS WITH TEL AVIV SHOOTING
Tuesday's bloodshed began when a Palestinian armed with an assault rifle,
grenades and a knife killed three Israelis and wounded 25 at a Tel Aviv
restaurant before dawn.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat
(news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) faction, said it was avenging the
killing of a mother and three children with a tank shell on Monday and a raid
into a West Bank refugee camp.
Six hours after the Tel Aviv shooting, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed
himself and an Israeli on a bus in the northern town of Afula in an attack
claimed by the Islamic Jihad group.
A gunman shot dead an Israeli settler in her car, and a bomb
