An explosive device went off under an Israeli army tank Tuesday near the Jewish settlement of Nisanit, on the Gaza Strip border, said Israel Radio, cited by Haaretz newspaper.
There were no injuries, the report said.
Following the incident, Israel Radio said that Israeli troops in the area opened fire on a number of “suspicious people.” There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Overnight, the Israeli Army began imposing a curfew in the section of the divided West Bank city of Hebron under its control, after a another day of carnage.
Israeli Army vehicles ordered Jewish settlers and Palestinians to return to their homes, after a flurry of clashes, said reports.
According to Haaretz newspaper, two Israeli soldiers, a settler, a seven-year-old Jewish boy and a 10-year-old Palestinian child were wounded during gun battles.
But AFP said that “five Israelis had been shot in Hebron, including a boy, one soldier and three border guards.”
After the shootings, the army had responded with an "intensive bombardment," according to Palestinian sources, cited by AFP.
The sources said a 10-year-old Palestinian was injured by shrapnel during the bombardment of the city's Palestinian-controlled sector.
The escalation reportedly began when Palestinians in the Abu Sneina area, a sector under Palestinian control, fired in the direction of the Avraham Avinu settlement, Haaretz said.
Hebron's population of 400 settlers lives in tension with the city's 120,000 Palestinians. The city has been a flashpoint for violence since the start of the nearly nine-month-old Palestinian uprising, or Intifada.
Israel withdrew from four-fifths of the city in January 1997 in line with peace agreements signed between the two sides, but settlers have been calling for the army to retake the Palestinian areas since the outbreak of violence in late September.
Meanwhile, an advisor to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said Monday that Palestinians wanted a political solution to end the conflict since September between them and Israel, AFP said.
"There is no security solution without a political solution, and our position is that the Mitchell report must be implemented in full," said Abu Rudeina, quoted by Voice of Palestine radio.
The Mitchell report calls for an immediate ceasefire followed by a cooling-off period, and confidence-building measures -- including a halt to Jewish settlement-building in occupied Palestinian territory and action by the Palestinians against terrorism -- to usher in a new round of peace talks.
"The political process must be reactivated over the coming days," said Abu Rudeina, who accused Israel of trying to "torpedo American and European efforts to restore calm" in the area.
A senior Israeli official travelling with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the United States said Sunday there would be no political progress without an end to violence.
"We demand an 100 percent halt to violence, otherwise there will be no move to the next stage. The (Israeli) government's position on this point is clear and will not change," the official said, quoted by the agency.
Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres repeated a parallel theme Sunday in comments to Israeli television, saying peace was the only way for Israel to achieve security.
"There is only one way to achieve complete security: that of peace, whether it is in the (Jewish) settlements or at Raanana (near Tel Aviv)," he said on Israel's second television channel.
"Just as for the Palestinians, we have no other real alternative than to make peace," said Peres, adding "there are nine million people between the Jordan river and the sea; five million Jews and four million Arabs. We must work it out."
Despite the June 13 ceasefire, confrontations have continued and the two sides have blamed each other for not respecting the truce.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, CNN reports that Palestinians have killed at least 112 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and at least 458 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded, and over 500 killed.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
