Israeli helicopter gunships launched attacks last night on offices belonging to the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from at least three attacks on Fatah offices in the West Bank towns of Nablus and Ramallah and on a building used by Fatah members of the Force 17 militia in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip.
The motivation for the attacks was not immediately clear but may they may have been in retaliation for Palestinian sniper fire against Israeli forces in the past week. Earlier yesterday, an Israeli was killed in Jerusalem for the first time since the latest wave of unrest began over a month ago. Two Israeli security guards working in an Arab neighbourhood were shot at close range. One died, the other was seriously injured.
The incident took place at a social security office in East Jerusalem. Police said one or more attackers entered the lobby of the building and shot the two armed security guards in the head. One of the guards died in Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital and the second was said to be in a serious condition.
Two dead bodies were found on the West Bank - one an Israeli man who had been stabbed repeatedly, the other a 20-yearold Palestinian shot in the head during clashes with Israeli forces the night before. The latest killings bring the death toll to at least 143, most of them Palestinians.
Police said the Israeli victim, who was in his 30s, had received several stab wounds to the upper torso before being dumped in a dry riverbed near the controversial Jewish settlement of Gilo, a flashpoint in recent violence.
On the political scene, the parliamentary difficulties of the embattled Israeli Prime Minister eased yesterday. Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party, citing a national emergency, decided not to vote against Mr Ehud Barak's minority government for the next month. Shas, which holds a key bloc of votes, is a former member of the Barak-led coalition, but defected during the summer because of political concessions to the Palestinians.
Addressing the Knesset, which returned yesterday after its summer recess, Mr Barak said Israel's hand was still stretched out in peace but it would not make concessions to the Palestinians under the threat of violence.
"In the name of the majority of the people in Israel, I tell Chairman Arafat today: know that by violence you shall not achieve anything," Mr Barak said. He had been ready to make far-reaching compromises before the recent disturbances. "The Palestinians should know that we were willing to fulfil part of their dreams, even at a heartbreaking price." He warned "the window of opportunity in which we operate is closing". Negotiations were conducted around a table, not in the streets with shooting and stones.
"At the decisive hour, on the brink, as Abba Eban once astutely said, `The Palestinians again didn't miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity'," Mr Barak said, referring to the former Israeli foreign minister. His 30minute speech was interrupted by heckling from Palestinian and right-wing Israeli members.
The Prime Minister, who controls only 30 seats in the 120member Knesset, has been negotiating with the leader of the right-wing Likud Party, Gen Ariel Sharon, whose visit to a disputed Jerusalem shrine last month was blamed by Palestinians for provoking the current violence. But Gen Sharon reportedly wants a veto over the peace process, a precondition Mr Barak appears unwilling to accept.
Reuters reports from Gaza:
A Palestinian mother was reunited with her six-month-old baby yesterday, more than a month after the wave of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip came between them.
Ms Iman Rudwan and her infant son Amr, who live in the West Bank, were visiting her family in Gaza when the unrest erupted on September 28th. A day later, she had to make an urgent business trip to the West Bank, leaving Amr with his grandmother in Gaza. Ms Rudwan could not return to Gaza to pick up her son after Israel clamped a closure on Palestinian territories. She was finally reunited with Amr when the baby was taken to Ramallah in a vehicle of the International Committee of the Red Cross.