TEHRAN Violence erupted on Wednesday as Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza Strip held demonstrations to commemorate the 53rd anniversary of a UN resolution on the partition of Palestine.
Israeli soldiers shot and wounded four Palestinians who had been pelting them with stones at the Karni crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
In Rafah along the Egyptian border, medical officials said one Palestinian was by hurt by shrapnel from a single Israeli rocket fired from a nearby army position.
Clashes also erupted at the Bureij Refugee Camp in central Gaza, but without reports of injuries.
Overnight, the Israeli Army reported sporadic shooting incidents between armed Palestinians and Israeli troops near Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but said there were no injuries.
On Wednesday, several hundred demonstrators held a peaceful march in Gaza city calling on Palestinians to boycott Israeli and U.S.-made goods to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and their uprising, which has entered its third month.
Several dozen foreign women married to Palestinians also marched in Gaza city and delivered a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urging him to send international forces to protect the Palestinians.
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, a Palestinian gunman shot at Israeli soldiers guarding Joseph's Tomb, a Jewish shrine in the Palestinian-run town, but without causing any injuries, witnesses said.
In the northern West Bank city of Nablus, hundreds of Palestinians prepared to hold a march to express support for the Palestinian Intifada, but it was not immediately clear if they intended to head toward Israeli checkpoints on the outskirts of the city, which have been frequent deadly flashpoints.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly called on the British mandate territory of Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, but it was rejected by the Arabs.
Also, an Israeli settler was seriously wounded by Palestinian gunfire in the West Bank Wednesday, a military source said.
The man was hit as he was driving on the outskirts of Nablus, not far from the Migdalim settlement, in the north of the West Bank, the source said.
Top Palestinian official meanwhile, Faisal Husseini called Wednesday for more European involvement in the Middle East peace process, accusing the United States of siding with the Israelis.
He also expressed confidence the negotiations could resume despite the recent flareup of violence.
"I believe we can go back to negotiations and we can reach a peaceful settlement," he said, while adding that "negotiations must be built on the power of logic, and not on the logic of power." "I would like to see more of Europe in the process. We really do believe that Europe could prove to be more effective in the process," Hosseini told a press conference.
"The problem with the Americans is that they take the Israeli position and work within it, rather than taking both positions into view," he added in Vienna.
Husseini was in Austria for talks with Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, President Thomas Klestil and parliamentary Chief Heinz Fischer. A total of 292 people have been killed in the Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi also said on Wednesday that the Iranian nation and government support the cause of Palestine and the liberation of holy Qods.
Kharrazi said on the occasion of November 29, marking the day of global solidarity with the Palestinian people, that public opinion in Islamic countries is for adoption of strong measures by the international community and the UN Security Council to end the massacre of Palestinians.
To this end, he said, it is necessary to deploy UN observers in the region and establish a war crimes tribunal to try those responsible for atrocities in occupied Palestine in order to prevent a repetition of the massacre of Palestinian people.
In the meantime, thousands of Palestinians marched through a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, Syria Wednesday in solidarity with the uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Protestors, many of whom were members of the 10 hardline Palestinian groups based in Damascus, burned Israeli and American flags as well as an effigy of Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the Yarmuk Camp south of the Syrian capital.
They carried banners denouncing "Israeli Massacres of Palestinians" and saying there will be "No Peace Without the Return of Palestinian Refugees" to their homes in what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.