A security plan agreed upon by the Israelis and Palestinians was under threat already on the first day of its implementation after three Palestinians - including the brother of a jailed radical militant leader - and an Israeli soldier were killed yesterday in clashes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
In Bethlehem, however, where the plan went into effect on Monday, with Palestinian security forces patrolling the streets in place of the Israeli military.
Palestinian witnesses said that an Israeli undercover unit shot dead Mohammed Saadat, the brother of Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in Ramallah after he tried to flee soldiers who had come to arrest him. According to Israeli media reports, Saadat was armed with a pistol and fired at soldiers.
Ahmed Saadat has been imprisoned under international supervision in a Jericho jail since May. His group claimed responsibility for the assassination of far-right Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi in a Jerusalem hotel last year. The Israeli soldier, 19-year-old Kevin Cohen, was killed during a firefight in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian hospital officials said that a 15-year-old boy, Ayman Zua'rub, was shot and killed in Khan Yunis by Israeli fire, apparently in the same gunfight. Hamas admitted the killing.
The first stage of the plan is supposed to include a troop redeployment in Bethlehem as well as Gaza. If the Palestinians succeed in extinguishing violence in these areas then it will be extended to other parts of the West Bank.
Responding to the shooting of the soldier, Israeli Defence Minister Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer intimated that progress was contingent on Palestinian security forces apprehending the Hamas sniper and preventing the firing of shells at Jewish settlements in the Strip.
"I told senior Palestinian officials about what happened [in Gaza] and said 'If you don't take care of it, we will'," said Mr Ben-Eliezer, who initiated the "Gaza-first" plan and sealed an agreement for its implementation with senior Palestinian Authority officials on Sunday.
In the Tul Karm refugee camp in the West Bank an armed Palestinian was killed and another injured during an Israeli raid.