The Israeli occupation army shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank on Thursday and arrested a resistance man accused of being behind an attack on an Israeli kibbutz that killed five people.Witnesses said occupation soldiers opened fire on stone-throwers in central Nablus, killing a 17-year-old youth during the second day of a large-scale Israeli sweep through the town. The occupation army said occupation troops shot an attacker who threw a petrol bomb at them.

Near the West Bank town of Tulkarm, occupation soldiers surrounded a house and arrested two wanted men, including Mohammed Naifeh, a senior member of a resistance group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah resistance group, the occupation army said.

The occupation army has accused him of dispatching the lone resistance man who killed five people at Kibbutz Metzer on Sunday. Among the dead was a 34-year-old woman and her two boys, aged four and five, killed as they cowered under their blankets.

Naifeh surrendered after a standoff of several hours in the village of Shweike, Israeli occupation army officials said.
The violence has added to problems besetting a new U.S. peace mission that has been overshadowed by a stormy Israeli election campaign and a threat of war by the United States to disarm Iraq.

"(The Israelis) are escalating every day, every hour," Arafat told reporters outside his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah. He said "fanatic groups" were now in power in Israel.

U.S. officials in Washington said they were resigned to slow progress in Middle East talks at least until Israel's general election on January 28. But the United States would continue to work on a peace "road map" at the center of mediation between Israelis and Palestinians, the officials said.

Israel pressed ahead with operations it said were aimed at thwarting Palestinian gun and resistance bomb attacks on its citizens, sending about 50 tanks and armored vehicles backed by helicopter gunships into the outskirts of Palestinian-ruled Gaza City before dawn.

Before pulling out, occupation troops seized three wanted Palestinians in connection with making mortar bombs and other weapons, the occupation army said. It said one was an officer in the Palestinian Preventive security force.

ISRAEL KILL TEENAGER IN NABLUS

The Israeli occupation army killed a Palestinian teenager in the northern West Bank city of Nablus it had invaded a day earlier.

Jalal Aweja, 17, was killed when the occupation army retaliated to stone-throwing with tank fire, Palestinian medical sources said.

ISRAEL KEEPS UP PRESSURE

The Gaza raid followed incursions by tanks into Nablus on Wednesday and by a smaller force into nearby Tulkarm on Tuesday as part of Israel's response to Sunday's kibbutz attack.

While Israel kept up the pressure, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman held talks in Ramallah with Arafat to discuss meetings held in Cairo this week between Fatah and the resistance Hamas group.

Hamas on Wednesday rejected a Fatah call to halt resistance bombings against Israelis in a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for statehood.

In a television interview on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took exception to a pledge by hawkish Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expel Arafat if Netanyahu succeeds in his bid to become prime minister again.

"I promised the Americans not to harm (Arafat) physically," Sharon said on Israel's Channel Two television.

Pressed on whether his promise also included a pledge not to banish Arafat, Sharon replied: "The security establishment and intelligence people concluded it didn't pay to (expel him) now because it would cause Israel more harm than good."

Opinion polls show Sharon with a commanding lead over Labour rivals in the January general election but with a narrower margin over Netanyahu, who is challenging him for leadership of their rightist Likud party in a November 28 primary.

In Tulkarm, Israeli occupation forces destroyed the family home of a Hamas resistance man who the occupation army said killed three women in the Jewish settlement of Hermesh in the West Bank on October 29. Occupation soldiers guarding the settlement killed the resistance man.

The occupation army said occupation troops arrested about 30 wanted resistance men in Nablus, mostly from Hamas.
Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank after resistance bombings in June in an effort to quell the Palestinian uprising in which at least 1,656 Palestinians and 631 Israelis have been killed since the violence erupted in September 2000.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian flag flies over Israeli occupation tanks as they take position near the old city of Nablus in the West Bank, November 13, 2002. Dozens of Israeli occupation tanks backed by helicopter gunships swept into Nablus in a stepped-up military response to a Palestinian attack that killed five Israelis on a kibbutz. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters)