TEHRAN Nearly 40 Palestinians were wounded in scattered fresh clashes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Wednesday, putting to the test a truce agreed in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh a day earlier.
The violence continued as the Palestinian Authority released a statement renewing its pledge to "work to calm the situation" in its troubled territories, matching one released by Israel the previous night.
In the central Gaza Strip, 25 Palestinian youths were wounded in fighting with Israeli soldiers guarding a Jewish settlement, witnesses and hospital sources said.
Soldiers fired on the youths from the nearby Deir el Balah Refugee Camp when they stoned the army post at the entrance to the Kfar Darom settlement.
One of the wounded, a 12-year-old boy, was in a serious condition at Shifa Hospital in Gaza city. The other wounded were taken to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. All had been hit by live rounds, doctors in both hospitals said.
Clashes were also reported in Erez, the Israeli-controlled crossing between the Gaza Strip and Zionists, with youths stoning troops.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, 10 people were hit by rubber-coated steel bullets or suffered from inhalation of tear gas fired by Israeli forces, witnesses said.
An AFP photographer was among those hurt, hit in the hand by a rubber bullet.
Three Palestinians were also injured by rubber bullets in clashes with Zionist troops in two villages near Bethlehem, witnesses said, while at Rachel's tomb at the entrance to the city, Palestinians hurled stones at the army post guarding the site.
Another Palestinian was injured in an exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen in civilian clothes and Israeli troops at the southern entrance to the city of Nablus, witnesses said.
Around 4,000 people had marched through the streets of Nablus for the funeral of Mohamed al-Dakheel, 27, shot when youths clashed with Israeli soldiers guarding the Jewish holy site of Joseph's tomb and a nearby Jewish settlement on October 2. He died of his wounds on Saturday.
The marchers condemned the Sharm el-Sheikh Accord, as did 2,000 people in Jenine further north, where a rally against the Sharm truce turned violent and demonstrators hurled stones at an army post near the city.
The statement from Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority followed one released Tuesday evening by Zionist Prime Minister Ehdu Barak's office in which he ordered his security forces "to work to end the violence".
The bloodletting came after Palestinian militant groups denounced the Sharm el-Sheikh Accord, and Israel began a slow easing of its tight clamp on the Palestinian territories, preparing to reopen the Gaza Airport and allowing limited passage into Egypt.
Israeli planes also broke the sound barrier in Lebanon yesterday.
In the meantime, an Islamist group here announced in Beirut Wednesday that it had attacked and caused casualties at an Israeli Army checkpoint in the Gaza Strip.
The forces of martyred leader Omar al-Mukhtar said in a statement faxed to AFP in Beirut it had attacked late Tuesday an Israeli Army checkpoint in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
The combatants "attacked a Zionist enemy checkpoint near the Salahuddin Gate in the region of Rafah south of the Gaza Strip with machine guns and hand grenades," it said.
"A number of enemy soldiers were hit," it said, adding that "the enemy has confirmed the attack and the casualties among its soldiers." "The heroes of our commando succeeded in withdrawing and returning safe to base," said the group, which pledged to "continue the resistance, in all its forms until the defeat of the Zionist enemy and the liberation of Palestine." Zionist military sources said two Israeli soldiers were wounded in clashes with Palestinians at the Rafah crossing-point, but on Monday.
On October 2, the group also claimed responsibility for the killing of a Zionist in the West Bank, saying it was in retaliation for the death of a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli Army fire.
The organization, named after a Libyan nationalist who fought Italian colonialism, had not been heard from in Beirut for two years.
Under the unsigned agreement reached at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, both sides are to take concrete measures to stop the fighting, a fact-finding committee is to be set up and Washington will try to bring the peace process back to life within weeks.
The Israeli Army had said it would pull out its tanks from the outskirts of the flashpoint West Bank town of Nablus late Tuesday.
The Palestinian Authority said in Gaza late Tuesday that the results obtained from the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit formed a "basis" on which an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement could be built.
"Israel's commitment to end the blockade (of the Palestinian territories), to withdraw its troops and to accept the setting up of an international inquiry are real signs of a desire for peace," it said in a statement carried by Wafa News Agency.
The Palestine Liberation Organization was less positive, with its Political Department Head Faruq Qaddumi declaring in Cairo: "The Sharm el-Sheikh Summit was routine business which did not lead to any worthwhile result." The Palestinian Authority meanwhile denied the existence of a secret agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians on security issues which a senior Israeli official said had been reached at the summit.
But the violence continued, as a Palestinian policeman killed by Israeli Army gunfire in the Gaza Strip became the first to die after the announcement of the deal.
There were also claims that the Israeli Army had fired rockets on the Rafah Refugee Camp in the southern Gaza Strip wounding four Palestinians, but the army vehemently denied that.
The leader of the Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction on the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, went further and dubbed the summit a failure, vowing that the Palestinian uprising would carry on.
Arafat is committed to rearrest members of the militant groups Hamas and the Islamic Jihad whom he had freed in recent days, a us senior administration official said.
Announcement of the deal came after officials had been predicting almost total failure, causing oil prices in London to shoot up to 31.58 dollars a barrel of Brent North Sea crude.
Arabs were universally hostile to the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit, seeing it as a U.S. and Israeli plot to preempt an Arab summit due to open in Cairo on Saturday, to Israel's advantage.
Syria led Arab efforts to mobilize for their own summit, called after the Israeli-Palestinian violence which has advanced moves to unite Arab ranks for the first time since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria flew into Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, seeking to build a "strong Arab front" against Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also flew to Riyadh to brief Saudi authorities on the summit, and it was announced early Wednesday that she would meet Assad while they are both in the country.
Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz told Albright that Saudi Arabia backs the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire deal, a senior U.S. official said.
Lebanon also said yesterday will call on fellow Arab states at their Cairo summit to cut all diplomatic and economic ties with Israel in retaliation for its killings of Palestinian demonstrators, Prime Minister Salim Hoss said Wednesday.
"I am carrying a document which calls for tough measures to be taken against Israel," Hoss told reporters, before heading for preparatory meetings in Egypt's capital for the October 21-22 summit.
"Among the measures which we deem necessary are a freeze to any normalization, a break in diplomatic and economic relations, and a return to the boycott of Israel until an overall and just peace on all tracks," he said.
"Otherwise these tracks (of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations) will remain unresolved indefinitely," said Hoss, who also holds the post of foreign minister.
On the other hand, foreign ministers of the 22-member Arab League started to arrive in Cairo on Wednesday, as newspapers back home dismissed the previous day's summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh as a victory for the Zionist state.
The ministers were on Thursday and Friday to discuss the draft resolution to be submitted to Arab heads of state for their gathering at the Cairo International Conference Center.
Eighteen out of 22 members of the Arab League have so far confirmed their participation at the summit, at varying levels, said an official at the organization's Cairo headquarters.
Several Arab countries, meanwhile, criticized the Sharm el-Sheikh summit hosted by Egypt.
They warned it would preempt their own top-level meeting and Arab efforts to confront Israel's killings of Palestinians in a wave of violence since September 28 that has claimed more than 110 lives.
Also, a high-ranking cleric authorized here Tuesday the allocation of a portion of the country's religious funds to help Palestinian civilians who are currently suffering from Israeli atrocities in the occupied lands.
"Since the usurper Israel, backed by the Great Satan, is so wickedly massacring Muslims, and given its end goal of wiping out all world Muslims, all Muslims have to reinforce their resistance against Zionism and spare no efforts to help Palestinians in their Intifada (uprising)," read a decree by Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani in response to a letter from a number of his faithful followers.
He called on the Palestinian nation to carry on with the Intifada to achieve a glorious victory.
Ali Akbar Velayati, senior advisor to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said here Wednesday that Intifada is the product of Iran's Islamic Revolution and Hamas is the product of Intifada.
Velayati told a meeting of congregational prayer leaders and female preachers that the Palestine issue began exactly before the World War I, simultaneously with rule of the Ottoman empire.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on Wednesday said that there are many doubts surrounding the outcome of Sharm el-Sheikh Summit, adding that the meeting could not produce a clear result.
Addressing the ambassadors of non-Islamic countries in Tehran, Kharrazi said the halt of Israel's military operations and the withdrawal of these forces is the first step toward calming down the fury of the Palestinian people.
Kharrazi said the brutal massacre of Palestinian children and young people by Israeli soldiers is not acceptable in any way and with any standard and it was Israel itself that added fuel to the anger of the Palestinians.
The foreign minister said it is very important that the negotiators and those who triggered the recent clashes be identified and emphasized that durable and just peace will be established in the Middle East only when the basic rights of the Palestinians, i.e. the right to return to their homeland, the liberation of all occupied lands and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with the holy Qods as its capital be secured.