HIGHLIGHTS: Ambush Occurs at Same Spot of Similar Resistance Attack Last December||Aqsa Brigades and PFLP claim responsibility||Violence Overshadows Quartet Meeting|| STORY: Palestinian Resistance men ambushed a bus carrying Jewish settlers in the West Bank on Tuesday, killing at least seven in a new spasm of Middle East violence before a high-level meeting of peace envoys. Palestinians disguised as Israeli occupation soldiers detonated a roadside bomb beside the bus at the entrance to Emmanuel, a settlement of mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews, then raked surviving passengers who fled the vehicle with gunfire.

The attackers escaped and Israeli occupation troops launched a manhunt.

The ambush occurred at the same spot where Palestinian Resistance men killed 10 people in a bus ambush last December.
It was the deadliest attack on Israelis since Israeli forces reoccupied seven of eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank last month after back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem, committed during an uprising for independence.

CLAIM OF RESPONSIBILITY

A Beirut television station run by the Lebanese Hizbollah movement said it had received a call claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a spin-off from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly condemned bombings against civilians in Israel and denied Israeli accusations of complicity in the strikes, but has not spoken out against attacks on occupation troops and settlers in occupied territory.

Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Shaath said Israel's occupation of much of the West Bank was perpetuating "this circle of continuous violence." Palestinian security services could not stop such attacks as Israel demanded because they had been crushed by Israeli military operations, he told Reuters.

Israel's shekel currency and major stocks dipped after news of the attack reverberated around the country.

VIOLENCE OVERSHADOWS NEW YORK MEETING

The search for an elusive, joint international approach to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was to resume later on Tuesday in New York with a meeting between top diplomats of the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

The group, informally known as the Quartet, also planned talks with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, key Arab states in the diplomatic push.

The Quartet envoys will discuss Bush's demand that Arafat be shunted aside and deep reform instituted in the Palestinian Authority as conditions for progress on Palestinian statehood.

But the Europeans and the Arab world, while welcoming Bush's call for a Palestinian state, disagree with his view that Arafat must go and reject Washington's tolerance of Israel's military clampdown in areas of the West Bank where Palestinians were granted self-rule under interim peace deals.

Nabil Abu Rdeinah, a close aide to Arafat, told Reuters in the West Bank city of Ramallah that "the Palestinian people alone have the right to choose" the Palestinian leadership.

"We demand the Quartet put pressure on Israel to immediately withdraw from the territories occupied recently," he said.
Also to be assessed by the Quartet envoys will be Israel's reoccupation of the cities and its curfew imposed over 700,000 Palestinians, measures which Sharon said would continue until Palestinian militants ceased trying to kill Israelis.

At least 1,445 Palestinians and 556 Israelis have been killed since Palestinians rose up in September 2000 after the U.S.-brokered negotiations on Palestinian statehood stalled.

PHOTO CAPTION

A body lies on the ground after a Palestinian Resistance men ambushed an Israeli bus near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank July 16, 2002 killing at least seven people and wounding another 20. The latest violence comes just before a high-level meeting of international peace envoys in New York. (Laszlo Balogh/Reuter