Israeli Killed When Vehicle Is Fired On

At least one Israeli was killed and three injured in a shooting attack in the West Bank today, a day after Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction called for an intensification of the violence that has wracked the Mideast for three months.

The victims were in a car that was fired upon as it passed an Arab village south of the settlement of Ofra, Israel Radio reported. The car overturned when the driver was killed, and one of the passengers was seriously injured, it said. Settlers said two were killed in the attack.

An army spokesman confirmed the shooting but could not immediately give details.

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian mourners in Gaza buried their latest casualty of Middle East bloodshed Saturday amid little apparent progress from private contacts aimed at resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“Let us teach them how to kill the Jews,” chanted mourners bearing the flag-wrapped body of policeman Mahmoud Naseer through the streets, a day after he was killed in a battle involving Israeli tank fire near the Israel-Gaza border.

On Saturday, clashes moved to Israel’s northern frontier, the scene of Israeli-Lebanese violence earlier in the week. Israeli security forces said their troops shot a man among a crowd of Lebanese stone-throwers when he threw a ladder against a border fence and tried to climb over. The man died of his wounds.

Spurred by the border violence, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned in the Kuwaiti daily Al Watan that Tehran would not leave its “strategic ally Syria” or Lebanon to face Israel alone.

Also on Saturday, the Fatah faction called for an escalation in the 3-month-old intifada. The movement marked the 36th anniversary today of its first military operation and sought to usher in 2001 as the year of Palestinian independence.

In a statement, the Fatah movement spoke of Palestinians’ “utter rejection” of peace proposals by President Clinton. It urged its followers and fighters “to make the next two weeks days of struggle against Israeli soldiers and settlers.”

The ongoing violence is complicating efforts to revive peace talks and end months of bloodshed in which more than 350 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed.

The peace drive stumbled again Friday when the two sides publicly staked out opposing positions over the right of return for Palestinian refugees and control over Jerusalem.

Caretaker Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said he would not sign a deal agreeing to the right of Palestinian refugees to return to what is today Israel, nor would he agree to Palestinian sovereignty over the Jerusalem holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Arabs as Haram al Sharif, or noble sanctuary.