TEHRAN Israel and the Palestinians Wednesday were awaiting the arrival of CIA Chief George Tenet, which signals a U.S. return to center stage in Middle East peace efforts to bolster a fragile cease-fire after eight months of bloodletting.

U.S. President George W. Bush announced Tuesday he was dispatching Tenet to the region, expected to try to revive security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians.

"We believe enough progress has been made on the cease-fire that it is time to send George Tenet to the Middle East to start serious discussions at the security level about how to make sure the cease-fire continues," Bush said.

Israel announced it was easing a blockade imposed on the Palestinian territories after the deadly Tel Aviv bombing, but the acrimonious atmosphere between the two sides was poisoned further after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon labeled Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a murderer and a liar.

"One must understand we speak about a murderer. He is a murderer, a pathological liar," the hawkish former general said in an interview with Russian television Channel NTV.

They were his harshest public comments against Arafat since becoming prime minister in March, although Sharon has repeatedly accused forces under the Palestinian leader's control of being behind anti-Israeli attacks during the tide of violence that has cost 600 lives.

Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman branded Sharon's remarks as "obscene" and said they only proved his intention to continue war against the Palestinians, who make up the vast majority of people killed during the uprising.

"If Israel wants peace it should silence this raven that caws day and night against the leader of the Palestinian people," he told AFP. "These allegations are poisoning the air, they block the road and sabotage the international efforts to resume the peace process."

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the leading dove in Sharon's right-dominated coalition government and who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat in 1994, issued a note of caution.

"If we declare Arafat a terrorist, then we won't be able to talk to him," he told Israel Radio.

Peres also said Israel could not ignore the "change on the ground" since Arafat's weekend call for a cease-fire.

Since then, only scattered violence has been reported, although Israeli officials complain that Arafat has still not met demands for the Palestinians to put wanted militants back behind bars.

Reuters said meanwhile, that Zionist settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village in the West Bank on Wednesday, further undermining a fragile cease-fire, after Palestinian stone-throwers seriously hurt a Jewish baby.

Armed settlers burned three Arab homes and a vegetable hothouse to the ground in the village of Al-Sawia and raised an Israeli flag over another house, villagers and Palestinian officials said. Police said they had arrested two settlers.

Despite the attack, Israel said the cease-fire promised by President Yasser Arafat four days ago was starting to take hold and that it would resume food and fuel supplies to the Palestinians that were suspended at the weekend.

In the meantime, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed faction of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah Faction, claimed Tuesday attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank.

In a statement faxed to AFP, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on Israelis near the southern West Bank town of Al-Khalil.

The group said it had attacked "an Israeli military vehicle on the road to Halhoul, near Al-Khalil, and hurt its passengers."

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Syrians paraded through the streets of Damascus Tuesday in support for the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation and condemn Israeli policies.

Brandishing signs in Arabic and Hebrew bearing the words "We Will Return to Jerusalem (Bait-ul-Moqaddas)," they called for the Intifada to continue "until the liberation of every inch of the occupied territories."

In another development, a former Zionist soldier Josef bin Elizer apologized to the Palestinian people whom he had "suppressed" when he was young.

Elizer, now 71, told the Hard Talk show on BBC that he was a Polish who was expelled from his home country by Nazi forces. Then he moved to Palestine and joined the Zionist army during the formation of the Israeli entity.

He said he found out that Israelis were suppressing the Palestinians, and they were doing the same thing Nazis had done to his family. So he pulled out of the army and left the country for Germany.

During the TV show, tearful Elizer asked Palestinians whom he had treated like Nazis to forgive him.