HIGHLIGHTS: Two Palestinians Killed Over Past 24 Hours||UN Could Take Over Security in PA Areas||Exiles Won't Be Granted Refugee Status in Europe||Israeli Arabs Deeply Involved in Aqsa Intifadha||STORY: An Israeli occupation force operating in the Ramallah area in the early hours of Thursday morning, killed a member of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Force 17 presidential guard unit and arrested four men on the occupation army's wanted list, Israel Radio reported.

Late Wednesday, another civilian was shot dead in Dir el Balah, Gaza Strip. Mohsen al-Atrash, 23, was unarmed when he was killed by a tank shell near the central Gaza Strip Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, the source told AFP.

An Israeli occupation army spokesman said occupation soldiers had opened fire after a mortar round fired by Palestinians struck near the settlement without causing any damage.
UN FORCES COULD TAKE OVER

Meanwhile, according to AFP, UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said that the world body could take over security in the Palestinian Authority if Yasser Arafat's own forces were unable to fulfill the role.

"It is a fact that the PA has failed in its duty to control terrorism and we have criticized that over and over again," Roed-Larsen said. "That void will have to be filled and probably it is the UN who are in the best position to fill it in," he said.

"If it continues to deteriorate, something has to be done." Roed-Larsen insisted there was no plan to put the Palestinian territories under UN control, calling Arafat the "democratically elected Palestinian leader."

EXILES WON'T BE GRANTED REFUGEE STATUS

Speaking in Reykjavik, Iceland where he is attending a NATO Foreign Ministers session, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said that the 13 Palestinian Exiles now in Cyprus would not be granted refugee status. They would instead, he went on to say be allowed the right of temporary residents in the country's that will take them. That, he added will enable them to move freely and will also grant them the right of being under state protection each in his country of residence. (Read photo caption)

Monday, the EU said six nations - Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain - are ready to take the Palestinians Israel has described as the most dangerous of those holed up for more than a month in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity. Details were still being worked out and the 13 were not expected to leave Cyprus for several more days.

FOUR ISRAELI ARAB WOMEN ACCUSED

Four Israeli Arab women were meanwhile charged Wednesday with helping to guide Palestinian Resistance bombers to their targets in Israel.The cases were evidence of growing involvement by Israel's minority Arab community in the uprising by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which began in September 2000 and punctuated by dozens of bloody bombings by Palestinians.

Arabs make up about one-sixth of Israel's citizens.The Haifa district court was told two sisters from the Galilee Arab village of Sakhnin were arrested April 17, Israel's Independence Day, just hours before they were to lead a Palestinian woman suicide bomber to her target, a crowded shopping mall.

Latifa Saadi, 20, was the main suspect, while her sister Buessa, 26, was accused of being an accomplice, the indictment said.

Two sisters from Arabe, another Arab village in northern Israel, were accused of providing extensive aid to the militant Islamic Jihad group in the West Bank town of Jenin, to enable it to carry out bombing attacks in Israel.

One of them, Lamis Jarbune, 29, appeared Wednesday at the magistrate's court in Acre and was remanded in custody for seven days. Her sister, Lina Jarbune, 28, has already been indicted in Haifa.

PHOTO CAPTION

The Spanish ambassador to Cyprus, Ignatio Garcia Vate Casas, speaks to reporters after briefing 13 Palestinians exiled by Israel of a decision by the European Union to take them in, in Larnaca, Cyprus, Wednesday, May 15, 2002. The EU is working out arrangements on when the Palestinians, deported under a deal that ended the 5-week-old standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, will leave Cyprus. Spain and five other nations agreed to accept them. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)