Arab News, Agencies

Arafat’s intervention, which followed an appeal by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, came as his Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas convened an emergency Cabinet session to discuss the security crisis.

“President Yasser Arafat calls on all groups and parties to commit themselves... to the cease-fire to give a chance to all peaceful international efforts for the implementation of the roadmap,” a statement on the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said.

Arafat accused Israel of rejecting the US-backed road map for peace by “escalating” its attacks against hard-line groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

But he called on the factions to make a new commitment to the cease-fire to “stop the war, the killing, the assassinations and daily military escalation”.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad both called off a seven-week-old truce last week after Israel killed Hamas co-founder Ismail Abu Shanab in retaliation for the bombing of a Jerusalem bus that left 21 people dead.

Powell, whose government has refused to negotiate with Arafat, called on the veteran leader last week to work with Abbas to end the upsurge in violence.

A senior Israeli government official said yesterday that Israel would continue the targeted killing of militants despite a botched air strike on Tuesday, which left an elderly passer-by dead.

“Our liquidation operations are going to continue against everyone implicated in terrorist attacks, in the preparation of attacks or in the firing of rockets,” he told AFP.

“No terrorist should expect to benefit from the least impunity,” the official added. “We will continue to act when and where we judge useful, with all means necessary, until the Palestinian Authority decides to fight the terrorists as it is committed to doing.”

An elderly Palestinian was killed Tuesday and more than 20 others wounded in a failed helicopter strike in the northern Gaza Strip.

Hamas said the targets had been Wael Akilan and Khaled Massoud, two members of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.

The army said the raid had targeted Massoud, who it said had fired Qassam rockets into Israel.

Military sources said that an Israeli soldier yesterday shot dead a young Palestinian who had run at him with a knife at a checkpoint near Bethlehem. It was not known if he belonged to any faction.

Abbas met with his Cabinet here to discuss the deteriorating security situation, laying the blame at the door of the Israelis.

Information Minister Nabil Amr told reporters that the Cabinet held “Israel fully responsible for this deterioration, and all the grave implications it has on regional stability.”

Amr also said that Abbas would seek approval from the Palestinian Parliament where he would ask for a vote of confidence on his first 100 days in office.

Abbas is hoping that such a vote will give him a mandate to take on Arafat, as he battles with the veteran leader for control of the security apparatus.

“I think this session that Abbas is trying to transfer the battle between Arafat and Abbas to the PLC (Palestinian Legislative Council) playground,” independent MP Azmi Ash-Shuyabi told AFP.

The Israeli Army said yesterday it had arrested 32 wanted militants in a series of overnight raids in the West Bank.

Those arrested included five Hamas members in an operation in Nablus in which an Islamic Jihad activist was also nabbed, an Israeli military source told AFP.

Another Hamas operative was arrested in the village of Madama, to the south of Nablus, on suspicion of organizing an imminent anti-Israeli attack.

“He was organizing a particular attack that we had intelligence on.”

Meanwhile, at least two people were injured as clashes broke out in the center of the West Bank town of Ramallah yesterday after the Israeli Army sealed off the offices of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), witnesses and medical sources said.

Soldiers opened fire with rubber-coated bullets after being pelted with stones by PFLP followers who had gathered in the West Bank city’s main Manara Square to commemorate the second anniversary of the assassination of PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa.

Mustafa was killed in an Israeli Army raid on Aug. 27, 2001.