In one of the most tangible signs of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in months, the Israeli army said Friday that Palestinian police in the eastern West Bank city of Jericho had handed over weapons seized from armed militant groups.
"The Palestinians in Jericho handed over a stack of weapons, including 12 empty gas canisters filled with explosives, around 50 home-made grenades and an anti-tank rocket," the army said in a statement.
The move came just two months after the army lifted a blockade imposed on Jericho, the only major town to have escaped Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank in June 2002.
The Israeli tabloid Maariv said Friday the deal had been approved by several Palestinian officials, including recently appointed prime minister Mahmud Abbas.
The United States and Israel had pushed for the creation of Abbas's post, pinning their hopes on the dovish veteran to sideline Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) and take concrete steps to end the 30-month-old cycle of bloodshed.
But while the number of anti-Israeli attacks has fallen sharply in recent months, Palestinian and peace activist casualties from Israeli operations have continued to rise in the Gaza Strip, where violence flared anew on Friday.
In the border town of Rafah, a 21-year-old Briton was pronounced clinically dead after being hit in the head and critically wounded by Israeli sniper fire.
Thomas Hurndall was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group of pro-Palestinian activists who engage in non-violent action to protect civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, they said.
"He was trying to pull two girls out of danger when he was hit in the head by a bullet," eyewitness and British ISM colleague Rafael Cohen, 37, told AFP.
"At first they were firing several metres (yards) over the children's heads but it was getting very, very dangerous so Tom went to help them.
"He was at ground level when they shot him directly in the head," he said, adding that he believed the Israeli troops had fired deliberately given that Hurndall was wearing a fluorescent jacket clearly labelled ISM at the time.
Doctors at Rafah hospital said the young man was pronounced clinically dead shortly after he was admitted. He was later airlifted to a hospital in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba, members of the ISM team in Rafah said.
The Israeli army would not comment on the incident.
However, in a bizarre twist, military sources claimed they had no knowledge of such a shooting, despite admitting troops "offered medical assistance and airlifted him to a hospital in Beersheba."
It was the third incident in four weeks in which a foreign peace activist had been injured or killed during Israeli military operations.
Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli helicopters fired several missiles on a cemetery in the southern city of Khan Yunis, wounding one Palestinian, medical sources said.
An army patrol then opened fire on a crowd that had gathered near the location of the strike, lightly wounding another two.
Another missile was fired moments later and landed unexploded by the house of member of the military wing of the hardline Islamic group Hamas, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the sources said.
Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw phoned Yasser Arafat on Friday to reassure him that the international community remained "committed" to implementing a roadmap for Middle East peace which foresees a Palestinian state by 2005, according to Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior Arafat advisor.
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