Israeli troops killed a Palestinian schoolboy yesterday as both sides mourned their dead after annual Palestinian protests against the founding of Israel.
However, the US appeared to be stepping up diplomatic efforts to stem an eight-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
A senior Palestinian official said preparations were under way for Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and US Secretary of State Colin Powell to meet next Wednesday in Paris. The meeting would be the highest-level Palestinian contact with the Bush administration, following a meeting on Tuesday between Powell and senior Palestinian official Mahmoud Abbas.
And Arafat yesterday called in Cairo again for a new summit to be held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the report of the US-led Mitchell commission into violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
Arafat met the leaders of Israel and the US in Sharm el-Sheikh last October at a summit that led to the creation of the Mitchell commission, charging it to look into the nearly eight months of violence.
"The commission was set up by the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, and that summit must reconvene to discuss the commission's report," Arafat told a press conference at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo.
Despite that, violence continued to take its toll.
Fifteen-year-old Mohammed Salim was shot dead as he passed an Israeli army watchtower near the heavily guarded Jewish settlement of Netzarim in Gaza Strip, hospital officials said. Palestinian hospital workers at the scene said he had been carrying his schoolbag and had been shot without provocation. The Israeli military said it could not immediately give details.
Palestinian anger had already been fuelled by the killing by Israeli troops of five Palestinian paramilitary policemen in the West Bank on Monday.
Tensions remained high a day after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets to mark the Nakba, or "catastrophe," when some 700,000 Palestinians were forced out or fled in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war following Israel's creation. The day is the most emotionally charged in the Palestinian political calendar, and during Tuesday's protests Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinians and wounded more than 200.
A 21-year-old Jewish settler, Idit Mizrahi, was also shot dead by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank on Tuesday.
In a defiant address broadcast on Tuesday by Palestinian media, Arafat vowed that Israeli military might would never make Palestinians surrender their dream of independence.
He said the only way to achieve peace was through full withdrawal of "the occupation army and settlers" from all Arab lands seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
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