Israel warned it will press ahead with daily raids on Palestinian areas after four Israelis were killed in the West Bank, as Yasser Arafat sped up reforms aimed at easing pressure on him by finally adopting a Basic Law defining his powers.
In Cairo, meanwhile, US Middle East envoy William Burns announced the launch of what he called Washington’s ”three-track” strategy to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
A senior Israeli official close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said after a cabinet session focused on the latest attacks that ”there will be frequent raids to stop the suicide attackers and shooters.”
Incursions and brief re-occupations of towns have increased since Israel’s huge West Bank campaign last month and are based largely on intelligence extracted from militants caught in that operation, he said.
In the latest anti-Israeli violence, three Orthodox Jewish students were killed when a Palestinian gunman from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades broke into the Jewish settlement of Itmar near the West Bank town of Nablus late on Tuesday.
The gunman, whose shadowy organisation is linked to Arafat’s Fatah movement, was also shot dead. As pressure rose on Arafat to restructure his security forces to prevent a rising number of such attacks, an official said the Palestinian leader had finally signed a Basic Law, five years after his parliament adopted the de facto constitution defining his powers.
Arafat signed the law into effect late on Tuesday, said the head of the Palestinian Legal Committee, Abdul Karim Abu Salah.
The Basic Law, the constitution defining the powers of Arafat’s executive authority and the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), or parliament, was passed almost unanimously by the PLC’s 88 members in October 1997.
The Palestinians are also due to announce a new cabinet lineup in the coming days, with the number of ministers reduced to around 20 from the current 32.
The new government will include members of various political groups and non-political figures, with the number of portfolios streamlined, cabinet secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said.
Meanwhile, Burns said he told Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher about the US commitment to ”a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the crisis … which involved movement on three tracks.”
Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, said President George Bush and US Secretary of State Colin Powell had asked him to consult with Egypt and other Arab allies on the first two tracks.
”First, to renew a serious political process aimed at the two-states solution. Second, to support Palestinian efforts to build strong institutions in preparation for statehood,” he told reporters.
The third track, ”to ensure effective Palestinian performance on security,” was the task of Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet, who is to head for the Middle East on Friday, said Burns on the first leg of a regional tour.
Back inside Israel, an elderly Israeli woman and her 18-month-old granddaughter were buried near Petah Tiqvah, two days after being killed by an Al-Aqsa suicide bomber.
The group has ignored appeals by the Palestinian leadership to stop attacking Israel civilians and provoking devastating retaliation.
The Israeli army on Wednesday arrested a woman near Bethlehem planning to blow herself up in a suicide bombing after pulling out of a similar attack last week, public radio said.
The latest rise in violence comes just two months after Sharon’s forces launched a West Bank invasion to ”crush the infrastructure of terrorism” following a series of suicide bombings that killed scores of Israelis.
The operation left more than 200 Palestinians and at least 29 Israeli soldiers dead and led to a period of relative calm as dozens of Palestinian militants were arrested.
On Wednesday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian ”by mistake” near the West Bank town of Nablus after he threw a suspect object that turned out to be a watering can and fled, Israeli radio reported.
Israeli troops were still occupying Bethlehem for a third day in what Israel said was an extended hunt for suspects, while Qalqilya, on the border with the Jewish state, was under occupation for a fourth day.
On the Israeli political scene, the Jewish ultra-Orthodox Shas was poised to return to the government after having agreed to vote for Sharon’s economic austerity budget, public television reported. – Sapa-AFP