The rights group said “at least 1,000 Palestinian were killed by the Israeli Army (in 2002) and most of them unlawfully. They included 150 children and at least 35 individuals killed in targeted assassinations.”

The group also denounced the army’s “prolonged closures and curfews” which have been systematically imposed since Israeli troops reoccupied most of the West Bank in June 2002 to crack down on activists.

The report said thousands of Palestinians were arrested, among them hundreds of minors, and that more than 3,000 remained in military jail where it alleged torture was widespread.

Amnesty also condemned “the deliberate targeting of (Israeli) civilians by Palestinian groups,” which it said “constituted crimes against humanity.” Armed groups “killed more than 420 Israelis, at least 265 of them civilians and including 47 children and some 20 foreign nationals in targeted or indiscriminate attacks.”

The international rights group does not differentiate between civilians and Jewish settlers, often armed, who live in Israel-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. It said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had not done enough to put an end to anti-Israeli attacks beyond verbal condemnation since “in the overwhelming majority of cases those responsible for ordering or planning such attacks were not brought to justice and no investigation were known to have been carried out.”

The group stressed, however, that Israeli raids on the Palestinian security infrastructure had hampered Arafat’s government ability and willingness to crack down on activists.

Amnesty also singled out for criticism Israel’s alleged use of Palestinians as “human shields” during military operations, almost complete impunity for Israeli troops, wide-scale destruction of Palestinian property and the imprisonment of Israeli conscientious objectors.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops dynamited two houses belonging to dead Palestinian activists near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, security sources on both sides said. The first one was in the village of Tel and was the family home of Saied Ramadan, an activist from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades who had killed two Israelis by opening fire in central Jerusalem before being shot down.

The second house was in the village of Beit Furik and belonged to Mohammad Hanani, a member of the military wing of the Hamas resistance group who carried out a suicide attack in November last year, the sources said. The Israeli Army has demolished around 200 houses belonging to activists and their relatives since last summer.

In another development, Beijing’s special envoy to the region said yesterday China backs a continued role for Arafat and urges more United Nations involvement in Middle East peace efforts.

Arafat is a “legitimate leader elected by the Palestinian people”, Middle East envoy Wang Shijie told reporters in Beijing. Wang said he had “strongly urged” Israel to pull back its troops from Palestinian-held areas and end attempts to isolate Arafat. He met Arafat and other Palestinian and Israeli leaders in the Middle East last week.

New Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas told Wang that restrictions on Arafat would “create great difficulties for the peace talks”, he said. Wang said he urged both sides to end the “vicious cycle of violence and revenge”. Achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East is also the “shared responsibility of the international community”, Wang said. “The United Nations should play a larger role.”

Also yesterday, Arafat said that good US-Spanish relations could help the implementation of the roadmap for Middle East peace. Addressing reporters after meeting Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio, he said, “Since Spain has a strong and good relationship with the United States and Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has good personal relations with (US President George W.) Bush, we believe this relationship could be very important in the implementation of the road map.”