Israeli army forces surged into Palestinian-controlled territory again yesterday. They killed one Palestinian and injured 20, as the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon's categorical rejection of a call for a freeze on Jewish settlements looked set to frustrate yet another diplomatic effort aimed at ending the violence.
Mr Sharon yesterday said Israel would not accept the finding of the Mitchell Commission, set up to investigate Middle East hostilities, that a cessation of Palestinian-Israeli violence will be particularly hard to sustain unless the Israeli government freezes all settlement construction activity.
Mr Sharon clung to the traditional Israeli government position, telling his cabinet that the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be determined in final status talks.
Israeli troops, accompanied by several tanks, thrust about 500 metres into Palestinian land around the West Bank town of Beit Jalla, near Bethlehem, after the army said Palestinian gunmen fired on its troops guarding a major traffic artery linking a West Bank settlement bloc to Jerusalem. After a fierce gunbattle, during which Israeli tanks shelled homes from where Palestinian gunmen were firing, the army withdrew.
The Palestinians reported that one of the seriously injured was a five-year-old boy. The man killed in the fighting was Mr Mohammed Obeiyat (45), a member of the Tanzim militia which is linked to the Fatah Party of the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat. His cousin, Mr Hussein Obeiyat, was killed last year when an Israeli helicopter gunship targeted his car in the West Bank.
In other violence, one Israeli was lightly injured when a bomb exploded in a dustbin yesterday morning in Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv.
The Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, intimated yesterday that he had given the military wide-ranging discretion when it came to invading Palestinian territory. "In principle, I have approved any entry to Area A, if that's necessary to guarantee our security," he told reporters. Area A refers to those areas which the Oslo peace accords stipulate as being under full Palestinian control.
Speaking after a Gaza meeting with the EU envoy, Mr Miguel Moratinos, Mr Arafat said that the EU had exerted efforts to stop the Israeli aggression on Beit Jalla in order to force the Israeli troops to withdraw.
While refusing to accede to a settlement freeze, Mr Sharon is sure to earn international condemnation if he goes through with a plan, revealed yesterday in the daily Ha'aretz newspaper, to increase massively funding to Jewish settlements. According to the report, the Prime Minister intends submitting a proposal to his government for a huge 1.5 billion shekel (about $350 million) increase in state support for settlements.
One of Mr Sharon's central motivations is his need to deal with mounting security fears among settlers, the vast majority of whom backed him in elections earlier this year.
After the Palestinians received the Mitchell report last Friday, Mr Arafat suggested that the two sides hold a summit to discuss the commission's recommendations. But Israeli leaders immediately rejected the proposal, insisting that the Palestinian leader first end the violence.
The Palestinian Authority accepted the Mitchell findings yesterday. "The initial reaction of the Palestinian leadership is a positive one," the Palestinian Information Minister, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, told a West Bank news conference.