The Palestinian parliament has adopted a resolution calling for municipal elections to be held this year and parliamentary and presidential elections in early 2003.
In a speech on yesterday, in which he promised a sweeping overhaul of the Palestinian Authority, PA Chairman Yasser Arafat also called on parliament to prepare rapidly for elections, though he did not suggest a date.
Mr Arafat himself was elected Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, and the 88-member parliament chosen, in 1996, in the first and only poll to be held since the creation of the autonomous Palestinian entity two years earlier.
The Palestinian statistical office issued a statement today saying it was ready to prepare an updated list of voters within 60 days of elections being called.
If elections are held this year, 1,614,000 people would be eligible to vote. That would include 1,068,000 in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and 547,000 in the Gaza Strip, the statement said.
Earlier, the Israeli army shot dead a member of the Palestinian security services in its first Ramallah incursion since lifting a siege of Mr Arafat's compound. It also killed an unarmed man in Gaza, Palestinian security officials said.
The army said it also arrested two Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank city of Ramallah planning a suicide bombing in Jerusalem during a Jewish religious holiday starting later today.
The Ramallah operation was the first raid on the self-rule town since Israel ended its month-long siege of Palestinian leader Arafat's West Bank headquarters on May 2.
Israeli forces also staged a dawn raid on a village near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, imposing a curfew and rounding up residents, witnesses said.
The army moved into Taluza and arrested at least 20 people in house searches after telling villagers to stay in their homes.
As the Israeli crackdown on Palestinians continued throughout the territories, soldiers at the Aram checkpoint north of Jerusalem, arrested a Palestinian who they say had planted a bomb in the area, the army said in a statement, adding, "The bomb was found and defused."
Meanwhile, a Palestinian woman who was wounded last month by an Israeli hand grenade died of her injuries today, a hospital source in Gaza City said.
Faiza Abu Lebda, 36, had been seriously wounded on April 30 during an Israeli army incursion into the Rafah refugee camp, near the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt, the source said.
More than 2,000 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed since the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation broke out in September 2000.
However, the bloodshed has dropped off sharply since Israel ended its military sweep of the West Bank a week ago.
AFP