Three Israeli soldiers and three settlers were killed by Palestinian fire on Saturday, said reports.
AFP reported late in the day that three Israelis were shot and killed and two children wounded when Palestinian gunmen opened fire late Saturday on a car travelling between occupied Jerusalem and Modiin, west of the city.
The agency cited Israeli military radio as reporting that among the dead were a Jewish settler couple from the area.
One of the settlers died on the way to hospital, while the two children were slightly wounded, it added.
"The escalation against Israel initiated by (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat continues not only with the attack this morning, but also this attack against Israeli civilians," government spokesman and advisor Dore Gold told AFP after the attack.
Palestinians are fighting against 34 years of occupation, and deem attacks on settlers as a legitimate national struggle.
Israel also blamed the Palestinian Authority for the southern Gaza Strip attack that killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded seven others, according to Meir Rosen, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"It is clear that the operation last night, no matter which organization claims responsibility, was carried out with the approval of Yasser Arafat," Rosen had told AFP.
"The aim of the operation, for Yasser Arafat, was to prove that Israel had no choice but to negotiate with the Palestinians under fire," said Rosen, a former Israeli ambassador in Paris and Washington.
Sharon has repeatedly said Israel would only consider talks with the Palestinians after a period of calm in the latest uprising against 34 years of military occupation.
The overnight attack at a Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip was claimed by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a movement of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
But AFP quoted Israeli army General Doron Amog as casting doubts on that claim, saying the attack was more likely the “work of the Abu Rish faction of Yasser Arafat's Fateh movement.”
The small group emerged in the first Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, which erupted in 1987, and was active in the southern Gaza Strip, said the agency.
The operation was carried out by three Palestinians on Saturday. Two of them stormed an Israeli military camp in the Gaza Strip, killing three soldiers and suffering two casualties in the unprecedented operation.
In addition, one of seven Israeli soldiers wounded is in serious condition, while the rest suffered light injuries, said Haaretz newspaper.
The paper said that the three threw grenades and opened fire on the soldiers.
The two Palestinians who were killed in the operation were identified as Ameen Abu Hatab, 26, and Hesham Abu Jamoos, 24.
Thousands of Palestinians attended their funeral later in the day.
Israel Radio identified the three soldiers who were killed as Major Gil Oz, 30, and Staff Sergeant Nir Kobi, 21, from Kfar Sava.
The name of the third soldier killed has not yet been released, said the radio, cited by Haaretz.
Al Jazeera satellite TV channel reported that two Palestinian fighters stormed the area near a Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip, adding that the third fled the scene after the operation.
The attack took place around 3:15 a.m., the statement said, adding that Israeli helicopters and ambulances had moved in after the incident to evacuate the casualties.
Headed by Nayef Hawatmeh, the DFLP is one of the three principle components of the PLO.
Israeli forces shelled the Beit Sahur Palestinian town in the West Bank, and entered Rafah in the Gaza Strip, said reports.
Earlier, Hebron came again under heavy Israeli fire.
Meanwhile, Israel said Friday that its army's storming of the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron was a clear signal it would no longer show "restraint" toward the Palestinians and their 11-month uprising, said reports.
US President George W. Bush, meanwhile, rachetted up the pressure on President Arafat, claiming that the Arab leader's inability - or unwillingness - to halt terrorism was the main reason the peace process was deadlocked, according to AFP.
Israeli tanks raided mainly Palestinian-controlled Hebron early Friday, after snipers firing from the Abu Sneina area surrounding a Jewish settlement seriously injured an 11-year-old Israeli boy and his soldier brother.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer later told public television that his government was unwilling to accept any more such attacks.
"This operation signifies that Israel is no longer inclined to show restraint but continues to say to the Palestinians day and night: come back to the negotiating table," the minister was quoted as saying by Haaretz newspaper.
"The Palestinians must know that we will not sit with our arms crossed while they shoot at us or send kamikaze" suicide bombers, he said.
Also, Israeli army West Bank commander, Brigadier General Gershon Yitzhak, warned that if Palestinians continued to fire into the Jewish enclave in Hebron, "the [Israeli army] would re-occupy Palestinian-controlled areas overlooking the enclave," Haaretz said.
Around 400 Jewish settlers live under heavy army protection in the center of Hebron, surrounded by a Palestinian population of some 120,000.
Another senior Israeli official commenting on Hebron characterized the overall situation as a "war" that Israel was intent on winning.
"This operation is a clear message to the Palestinians, which means we are determined to win this war of attrition which was imposed upon us," said Dore Gold, a senior advisor to hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
During the Hebron operation which lasted several hours, the Israeli army also dynamited two houses which had been frequently used by Palestinian snipers targeting the settlement, and wounded 12 people in the area.
It was one of its deepest incursions into Palestinian territory since the Intifada erupted in late September.
Questioned by reporters at his Texas ranch on the incursion, Bush appeared sympathetic to the Israeli response, and charged that Arafat had not done enough to halt terrorism to warrant any resumption of the stalled peace talks.
"If Mr. Arafat is interested in having a dialogue ... then I strongly urge him to urge the Palestinian terrorists to stop the suicide bombings, stop the incursions, stop the threats," Bush said, cited by AFP.
His reference to "incursions" in connection with Arafat was not immediately clear, since it is Israel which has been criticized for its raids into areas ceded to Palestinian control under previous peace accords.
But Bush's comments appeared to further dampen hopes of a much-anticipated meeting between Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, agreed to in principle by both sides earlier this week.
No venue or date for that meeting, agreed to after the intervention of German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, has yet been set and there are indications that Israel is balking at the talks, the agency said.
AFP reported that Israel's TV network reported late Friday that Peres wanted to postpone the meeting since the current climate of violence made chances of a ceasefire agreement very slim.
In his remarks, Bush said the US goal was still to bring the two sides to the point where they could implement the recommendations of the Mitchell commission, an international panel that called for a series of steps to be taken in order to resume peace talks.
"In order to get to Mitchell, it requires there to be a cessation of terrorist activity," he said. "If not a cessation, a 100-percent effort to get to a cessation and we haven't seen that 100-percent effort yet."
The Palestinians' position appeared to further erode when they were forced to shelve plans at the United Nations for an immediate Security Council resolution after a split emerged among the eight non-aligned council members.
The United States had threatened to veto any action by the council which would have been legally binding consequences for Israel, as it did last March over a draft resolution to send UN observers into the occupied Palestinian territories.
The latest draft resolution included a provision for a "monitoring mechanism," while Israel has repeatedly opposed proposals for foreign observers as an "internationalization" of the conflict.
Also Friday night in the West Bank, some 50,000 Palestinians demonstrated in remembrance of Israel's "targeted killing" of six members of the Hamas movement, an attack which also killed two children.
Palestinian officials say that over 40 political leaders and resistance fighters have been killed under Israel's assassination policy, variously called by the euphemisms "targeted killings," "liquidations," "surgical strikes," and "interception operations."
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 566 Palestinians, and 146 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September - Albawaba.com
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