Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today appealed for an extraordinary Arab summit concentrating on what he described as an Israeli escalation against thePalestinians.
"I am going to study this question in detail with Jordan's KingAbdullah II in his role as the president of the Arab summit," Mr Arafat said upon his arrival in Gaza City from a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.
Mr Arafat underlined an urgent need for such a summit "to confront the Israeli military escalation against the Palestinians."
Mr Arafat's appeal comes after Israeli military officials said they were bolstering its West Bank forces.
The Israeli officials, who declined to be identified, said in a statement that the army had begun to send infantry and armoured reinforcements to the West Bank overnight after an escalation in 10 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The statement came after a day of tit-for-tat violence in which Israeli helicopter gunships killed four activists of the militant Hamas group and Palestinians launched their first West Bank mortar bomb attacks since the uprising started.
Reporting AFP and Reuters