UN chief Kofi Annan has called on Israel and the Palestinians to control their actions and return to the negotiating table, a spokesperson for the Annan said Monday. On Tuesday, Israel tightened its seige of Palestinian towns.
"The secretary general urges all concerned to exercise maximum restraint so that the violence can be brought to an end," spokesperson Marie Okabe told reporters in New York when asked about Annan's reaction to the latest spate of attacks.
She stressed that "those most recent incidents again highlight the urgent need for the resumption of political talks between the parties" and reiterated Annan's call for the implementation of recommendations put forward by a fact-finding committee lead by former United States senator George Mitchell.
Al Jazeera satellite channel reported that Israel had intensified its presence at the edges of the West Bank cities of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jenin.
on Monday, several Palestinians were injured when Israeli combat helicopters fired missiles at the Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City, which the army charged was being used as a weapons factory.
The strike followed the killing of six Palestinians, including wanted militants, in an explosion in the West Bank overnight.
At least four Palestinian policemen were injured in the lightning air raid on Gaza, which smashed walls and shattered windows in the three-storey building in a walled security compound, Palestinian security officials told AFP.
According to the Palestinian news agency, WAFA, Israeli tanks bombarded Rafah, seriously injuring two youths.
The Palestinians warned that the attack would escalate the conflict and again called for international intervention.
"This is another Israeli crime," Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's top aide Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP by phone while accompanying the Palestinian president on a tour of neighboring Arab states to seek support for an emergency Arab summit on the violence.
"It will only escalate the situation. We ask the international community, namely the United States, to move swiftly to stop the Israeli aggression and its war against the Palestinians and to provide international protection," he said.
The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of fabricating reasons to attack Palestinian targets and invited an international inquiry into the “alleged weapons laboratories.”
"The Palestinian Authority is ready to receive international parties to investigate the alleged manufacturing weapons and mortar bombs in order to uncover... the lies of the Israeli government," a statement issued by WAFA said.
The Israeli government, however, denied that the Israeli army was using excuses to carry out operations against Palestinian targets, said Haaretz newspaper.
"There is no cycle of violence," said Daniel Ayalon, foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "There is Palestinian violence, and then there are some responses that we have to take for self-defense."
Meeting US leaders of the Jewish Reform movement,
Sharon said that Israel would not agree to any peace moves until there was an end to the "violence.”
"The continuing violence, terror and incitement by the Palestinian Authority - an attempt to drag Israel into peace talks under fire - will not succeed," he was quoted as saying by a statement from his office.
The White House called Monday for both Israel and the Palestinians to show restraint, the paper added.
White House spokesman Ari Fleisher told reporters that the recent events were a worrying reminder of the volatile situation in the Middle East.
The Fateh movement earlier vowed to avenge the assassination of six Palestinians, including three militiamen, in an explosion in Farah in the northern West Bank.
Israel, which has carried out assassinations of around 40 activists during the Intifada, denied it was involved and said the men were killed in a "work accident" while preparing a bomb.
Palestinian police said the helicopter gunships fired a total of five missiles at the Gaza compound known as "Arafat City."
Other Palestinian security buildings in the area were evacuated, and one security official said Israeli warplanes were flying over Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border.
The Israeli army accused the Palestinians of firing more than 230 mortar shells at Israeli settlements and soldiers in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Intifada, said AFP.
A seven-year-old Israeli girl was slightly injured earlier Monday when Palestinians fired mortar shells at the Kfar Darom settlement in the southern Gaza Strip.
"The army will continue its activity to eliminate Palestinian terrorism and violence," it said.
Israel conducted a similar raid overnight Friday against what it said was another weapons factory in the Gaza Strip after a nearby Jewish settlement came under mortar fire.
In other unrest, two Israeli border police were seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting attack near Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, army radio reported, cited by Haaretz.
The attack was later claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Fateh.
An elderly Orthodox Jewish man was in critical condition after being stabbed in the back in the Arab market of Jerusalem's Old City by a suspected Palestinian attacker, a police spokesman said.
A young Israeli woman was also slightly wounded in a late-night knife attack by two Palestinians in the east Jerusalem settler quarter of Armon Hanatziv, police said.
Israel is also on high alert for Palestinian bomb attacks, with several explosions in Jerusalem in recent days, including one Monday, that have not caused any injuries.
Tensions soared over the weekend after a tiny group of Jewish ultra-nationalists carried out a ceremony marking the symbolic laying a cornerstone for a new Jewish temple near the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, a site sacred to Jews, but also the third holiest site in Islam.
The ceremony sparked clashes which left at least 18 Palestinians and 15 Israeli police injured and caused outrage in the Arab world – Albawaba.com
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