OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 25 August — Israel pressed on with its offensive, rounding up Palestinians and razing homes as it insisted there would be no new pullback from the West Bank or Gaza Strip until the Palestinian leadership cracked down more effectively on fighters.

"The Israeli Army will not move so long as the Palestinians are failing to impose calm on the ground by starting to fight hard-line groups," an Israeli security official told AFP, asking not to be named.

After Israeli commanders dashed Palestinian hopes of a redeployment in the West Bank city of Hebron Friday, a top aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accused them of breaking their commitments under the security deal. "The Israeli side refused to respect the engagements it had undertaken under the plans dubbed ‘Gaza-Bethlehem First’ and that should have resulted in a withdrawal from Hebron," the aide, Nabil Abu Rudeina, told AFP.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops killed Mohammed Hatem Hout, 26, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades during clashes. He was mowed down by bullets fired from an armored vehicle that was enforcing curfew in the town.

Six Palestinians were wounded, two of them seriously, by Israeli soldiers yesterday afternoon during a heavy exchange of fire in the Old City of Nablus, Palestinian hospital sources and witnesses said.

Israeli tanks posted near the downtown area fired a rocket at a house where Palestinians had taken cover, the sources said. Two of the Palestinians, aged 18 and 23, were badly wounded, the hospital sources said.

Palestinian witnesses claimed all the wounded were civilians from the area who were not involved in the fighting. Since it re-invaded most of the West Bank on June 19, the Israeli Army has imposed a systematic clampdown on Palestinians. It has also rounded up relatives of alleged attackers, destroying their houses and threatening them with deportation to the Gaza Strip.

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army razed several Palestinian houses and another building near a Jewish settlement, itself the scene of a failed attack earlier this week, Palestinian security sources said. Israeli bulldozers, accompanied by tanks, stormed into the Deir El-Balah area near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, and tore down three houses and another brick building, they said, adding that the houses were inhabited.

A Palestinian woman was gunned down by a Palestinian group on charges of collaborating with Israel, witnesses in Nablus said.

Israeli officials also stepped up their attacks on Arafat’s leadership, as they prepared to welcome a US envoy next week for talks they say will focus on US-Israeli efforts to sideline the Palestinian leader.

The head of the US State Department’s Middle East desk, David Satterfield, a former ambassador to Lebanon, will visit several Arab states as well as Israel to explain why new leadership is required to press ahead with reform of the Palestinian Authority, the officials said.

"The United States, just like Israel, believes that before Palestinian legislative elections are held, the Afghan model must be applied with the establishment of a caretaker government led by a prime minister who can undertake genuine institutional and economic reform," another senior Israeli official told AFP, asking not to be named.

But the Palestinians swiftly reiterated their rejection of US pressure to amend their constitution and create a new post of prime minister as a brake on Arafat’s powers. "We have told the Americans that it’s none of their business," chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told the London-based daily Al-Hayat yesterday.

"We were shocked when during our discussions the Americans spoke of changing the electoral law," he told the Arabic-language newspaper.