Agencies  --  Arab News

JENIN, West Bank, 8 May 2004 — Israeli troops shot dead three Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, while a fresh surge of violence on the northern front left an Israeli soldier dead and led to air raids on positions of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement.

Two people from the Islamic Jihad movement in the northern West Bank refugee camp of Nur El-Shams were killed when they resisted arrest by Israeli troops, security sources on both sides said.

An Israeli military spokesman said that two men being sought for taking part in anti-Israeli attacks were killed “after opening fire on a unit which had surrounded their house.” In nearby Nablus, Israeli troops swept the Old City for wanted militants and shot down Yaseen Kalbouni, 18, on a roof, Palestinian sources said.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei told AFP he would meet US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, following a renewed commitment by US President George W. Bush to the internationally drafted Middle East peace road map. The White House confirmed the talks, saying they would take place in Germany in about 10 days.

As the death toll for the three and a half years of Israeli-Palestinian bloodletting neared 4,000, there was a major flare-up in violence on Jewish state’s northern border.

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters traded heavy fire with the Israeli Army near the disputed Shebaa Farms, a mountainous area seized by Israel from Syria in 1967 and now claimed by Beirut with Damascus’ consent.

The Israeli Army announced a soldier had been killed and five wounded, two of them seriously, when Hezbollah attacked one of their positions. Hezbollah fighters fired dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israeli forces, who replied with heavy artillery and aircraft.

Queried about the renewed violence on the so-called northern front, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert played down its significance. “It has to be pointed out that (the clashes) are limited to this area and that no rocket was fired against Israeli civilian targets,” he told public radio.

On Wednesday, Israeli planes attacked what were said to be Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, after Hezbollah fired into Israel near the town of Kiryat Shmona.

Meanwhile, the diplomatic front was dominated by the crisis sparked by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s faltering “disengagement” plan, a package of unilateral measures which includes a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

A senior Israeli military official has drawn up a Middle East peace plan proposing to increase the size of the Gaza Strip threefold through an Israeli-Egyptian land swap, an official source said.

National Security Council chief Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland’s plan calls for Egypt to allocate 600 square kilometers in the Sinai peninsula to the Palestinians.

In exchange, Israel would hand over 200 square kilometers of land in the southern Negev desert to Egypt, including a tunnel linking it to Jordan.

“This is only one of the options being considered by the National Security Council as part of a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians,” an Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Israel’s top-selling daily Yediot Ahronot said that the project had already been presented to Rice and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, with Sharon’s approval.

In another development, a laser beam under joint Israeli-US development destroyed a long-range rocket for the first time in a test in the skies over the American Southwest, Israel’s Defense Ministry said yesterday.

Israel has sought an effective defense against ballistic missiles since 1991 when Iraq launched Scuds into the Jewish state during the first Gulf War. It has since developed the Arrow anti-ballistic missile with US funding.