Seven Palestinians, five of them unarmed, and two Israeli occupation soldiers were killed in separate incidents on Thursday in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Hebron, the Israeli occupation army said. Violence surged as a senior U.S. official had talks with Israeli leaders on preparations for a possible U.S. war on Iraq. Washington has sought to keep a lid on Israeli-Palestinian tensions while it seeks Arab support for such a campaign.

Israeli occupation forces near the Karni border crossing in the Gaza Strip killed five unarmed Palestinians they believed were planning to climb a occupation army fence to enter Israel, an Israeli occupation army source said.

Palestinian occupation army sources said the men were laborers trying to sneak into Israel to find work.

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation soldiers shot dead a Palestinian resistance man, who the occupation army and a Palestinian resistancegroup said was on a mission to attack an internationally illegal Jewish settlement.

In a third incident in Gaza, Israeli occupation troops shot and killed a Palestinian resistance man who crossed from the seaside strip into Israel and opened fire on occupation soldiers chasing him, the occupation army said.

In Hebron, two Israeli occupation soldiers, a man and a woman, deployed at an outpost near the Tomb of the Patriarchs shrine to protect Jewish settlers, were killed in a Palestinian ambush, the Israeli occupation army said.

The shooting occurred along a route where Palestinians laid an ambush on November 15 in which 12 Israeli occupation soldiers and occupation army men from the nearby internationally illegal Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba were killed.

The resistance activists opened fire on Thursday about 60 meters (yards) from the tomb, revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of the biblical Abraham. The site also houses al-Ibrahimi mosque, where a Jewish settler massacred 29 worshippers in 1994.

Commenting on the killings at Gaza's Karni crossing, an Israeli occupation army source said an Israeli occupation force opened fire at "several suspicious figures crawling toward the border fence."

He said the men were carrying ladders, "apparently having planned to get over the border fence" but no weapons were found.

U.S. OFFICIAL MEETS SHARON, MOFAZ

In Jerusalem, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith had talks on preparations for possible war against Iraq with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and later met Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz in Tel Aviv.

With Israelis increasingly jittery over the prospects of Iraqi missile strikes should the United States attack Iraq, a new shipment of U.S.-made Patriot missiles arrived in the port of Haifa on Wednesday.

On another front, Israel pressed ahead with its legal proceedings against Marwan Barghouthi, a leader of the more than two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence.

A Tel Aviv court quashed his bid to win release from detention, ruling that Israel had the right to try him on charges of masterminding attacks that killed 26 Israelis.

Barghouthi was captured by Israeli occupation troops in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in April. He insisted he was a political resistance leader, and as a Palestinian legislator, immune from Israeli prosecution. He denies involvement in any attacks.

The trial is the first of a major player in the uprising, and Israel hopes it will prove senior Palestinian officials, including President Yasser Arafat, have been behind violence.

The Palestinians say the hearing is a political show trial and that Israel has no authority to try Barghouthi.

At least 1,718 Palestinians and 670 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian revolt began

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians carry a Palestinian woman after she was overcome by tear gas as Israeli occupation soldiers tried to disperse a crowd that broke a curfew in the West Bank city of Hebron, December 12, 2002. (Nayef Hashlamoun/Reuter