Officials from the Islamic militantgroups Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared a seven-week-old trucedead today after an Israeli missile strike killed a Hamaspolitical leader in Gaza City.
The collapse of the truce, agreed by militant factions underinternational pressure, could sink a US-backed "road map"peace plan aimed at defusing a 34-month-old uprising andcreating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza by 2005.
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An Israeli soldier takes part
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Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior figure in Hamas's political wingwith a high media profile, was killed along with two bodyguardswhen four missiles fired by helicopter gunships shattered hiscar as it drove through Gaza City, witnesses and medics said.
Israel had hours earlier approved tougher military actionagainst the militants following the suicide bombing that killed20 people on a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday, one of the bloodiestattacks in almost three years of conflict.
Hamas today swiftly vowed to avenge Ismail Abu Shanab's death and another seniorHamas spokesman said the missile attack freed the group from itscommitment to observing the unilateral truce with Israel.
"The assassination of Abu Shanab ... means that the Zionistenemy has assassinated the truce and the Hamas movement holdsthe Zionist enemy fully responsible for the consequences of itscrime," Mr Ismail al-Haniyah told reporters in Gaza.
Hamas's close ally Islamic Jihad also renounced the truce.Reformist Palestinian Prime Minister Mr Mahmoud Abbas calledthe missile attack "an ugly crime". Aides said it would triggera relapse into tit-for-tat violence, thwarting peacemaking.
"Israel's continuation of this escalatory policy will...weaken the Palestinian Authority's ability to restore calm andto move on to the political process," Information Minister Mr NabilAmr said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"This attack is irresponsible and takes us back to the cycleof violence which the Palestinian Authority is trying to avoid."
US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell urged PalestinianPresident Mr Yasser Arafat to use security forces he controls tothwart attacks on Israel and warned of the risks of abandoningthe road map.
"I call on Chairman Arafat to work with Prime Minister Abbas and to make available to...Abbasthose security elements that are under his control so that theycan allow progress to be made on the road map -- end terror, endthis violence," Mr Powell said at the United Nations.
"At the end the road map is a cliff that both sides willfall off," he said.
The ceasefire markedly reduced violence but was wobbly fromthe start on June 29th. Some militant cells, including withinPalestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, rejectedit and continued sporadic attacks on Israelis.
But until Thursday militant faction spokesmen had insistedthe truce remained in force and said three suicide bombingssince August 12th were solely one-off reprisals for Israeli armyraids that netted or killed a handful of wanted men.
Earlier today, the Israeli army swept into the WestBank cities of Jenin and Nablus and arrested several wantedPalestinian militants, a military spokesman said.
Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's security cabinet saidin a statement after overnight deliberations that no progress onthe road map was conceivable unless Palestinian authorities tookaction against militant factions behind attacks - as the peaceplan requires.
"If the Palestinian government does not take all necessarysteps in the war on terror - real and substantive steps - itwill not be possible to move to the stage of diplomatic talks,"it said.