Israel and Palestinians clash in Jenin, UN backs Arafat

6.00pm

JENIN, West Bank - Israeli soldiers battled Palestinian gunmen and demolished the family home of a Hamas suicide bomber on Friday during a house-by-house sweep for militants in a West Bank city.

Four Palestinian civilians were wounded -- including a girl of 4 and boy of 12 standing nearby -- on the second day of the Israeli incursion, witnesses said. There was no word on possible militant casualties. Four soldiers were also wounded.

A US-backed peace plan envisaging a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territory has been derailed by a relapse into a tit-for-tat violence over the past month, with Washington largely preoccupied by turmoil in Iraq and a budding election campaign.

In New York, the UN General Assembly demanded Israel drop a threat to expel or harm Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in a 133-4 vote with 15 abstentions sponsored by Arab and nonaligned states. The United States, Israel and two small Pacific states voted against it.

The United States vetoed a similar resolution in the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Washington has no veto in the General Assembly, but Assembly resolutions carry far less clout than those of the Security Council dominated by Western powers.

Israel, which sees the United Nations as intrinsically biased against it, stirred an international outcry last week when it announced a decision in principle to "remove" Arafat as an "obstacle to peace", without saying when or how it would act.

Arafat, 74, denies inciting violence and has vowed to use his personal weapons to resist any move against him.

A senior Israeli government source said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would send a high-ranking delegation to Washington next week to try to defuse US opposition to the routing of a security barrier Israel is building through the West Bank.

The United States has said it is considering how much of a US$9 billion loan guarantee package it will deduct in response to Jewish settlement-building in the West Bank and that the barrier, which shields some settlements, could be an issue.

Israel says the barrier, a mix of fences and walls, is to keep suicide bombers out of its cities. Palestinians call it a "new Berlin Wall" expropriating farmland and in effect annexing terrain they seek for a state under the US-backed peace plan.

The senior Israeli source said two options were on the table -- extending the barrier well into the West Bank to include settlements with 30,000 Jews, an option demanded by rightist ministers, or separate fences enclosing individual settlements.

US officials want the barrier built as close as possible to the "Green Line" boundary between Israel and the West Bank, and not looped eastward to include Ariel, a major settlement 20km inside the territory.

The US-engineered "road map" peace plan requires Israel to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Palestinians to halt militant attacks to pave the way for a Palestinian state by 2005.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, rebuffing a call by Arafat this week for a ceasefire, pledged to maintain pressure on militant groups.

More than 2150 Palestinians have died in violence during the three-year-old uprising for statehood, while 805 Israelis have been killed in suicide bombings and ambush shootings during the same period.

Mofaz told Israel Radio that Arafat's choice for prime minister, Ahmed Qurie, could prove himself a peace partner only by cracking down on those organisations once he takes office with his cabinet, expected to happen next week.

President George W Bush said on Thursday the "road map" had stalled and he blamed what he called Arafat's failed leadership.

Palestinian Labour Minister Ghassan el-Khatib said Bush's comments were "not constructive".

Palestinians say the road map was undermined by Israel's continued raids to kill or capture militants even after they declared a ceasefire in June. They cancelled it a month ago.

- REUTERS