An off-duty soldier on Monday called on fellow troops to disobey orders to tear down structures during a violent confrontation at an unauthorised West Bank settlement — a sign of trouble ahead when Israel’s government orders evacuation of entire settlements in the summer. The incident on Monday was the first of its kind, according to the military.

Yasser Arafat’s expulsion is ”closer than ever,” the Israeli foreign minister warned in remarks broadcast on Thursday, as six Palestinians were killed by Israeli army fire in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the single deadliest incident, in the northern Gaza Strip, soldiers opened fire from a tank-mounted machine gun at Palestinians, killing at least three, including a 13-year-old boy, and wounding nine.

Israeli forces raided the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Friday in response to a deadly Jerusalem bus bombing and blew up the house of the assailant. Ten Israelis were killed and more than 50 wounded in Thursday’s suicide attack, the deadliest in four months. Such bombings in the past triggered large-scale Israeli military raids.

In rapidly escalating violence just two weeks before Israel’s general election, seven Palestinians, two of them gunmen who infiltrated an Israeli town, two other Arab attackers and two Israelis were killed in a 24-hour period.