TEHRAN Four more deaths in the West Bank ushered in the New Year Monday as Palestinians marked the 36th anniversary of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, amid pressure from Egypt, the United States and Europe to get a floundering U.S. peace plan off the ground. Palestinian Leader Arafat said he expected a response "within the next 24 hours" from U.S. President Bill Clinton to a request for clarifications of a plan for peace with Israel that Clinton has proposed. The response could very well spell out the fate of Clinton's hopes for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before leaving office in less than three weeks. "We are in contact with the American administration and we expect information from them in the next 24 hours," Arafat said after returning to Gaza from Egypt, while a Palestinian aide added they expected an answer by 7:00 p.m. (1700 GMT). After meeting Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, U.S. Republican Senator George Voinovich also called for Clinton to clarify the terms of his plan, which the Palestinians have refused to formally accept until he addresses their potential concerns over vagueness. In another effort to bolster peace prospects, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana Monday was scheduled to meet with both Barak and Arafat on Monday. But killings within the last 24 hours clouded hopes. A 12-year-old boy died in an Al-Khalil hospital where he had been taken Sunday after being caught up in a gunbattle between Israelis and Palestinians. Two Palestinian policemen also died in Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, where a senior Fatah official was also killed Sunday, allegedly in an assassination by the Israeli Army. The Head of West Bank Palestinian Hospital Services, Musa abu Hmeid, said the two men's hands had been mutilated and they had apparently been summarily executed. An Israeli military spokesman professed ignorance of how the men died, saying only that there had been heavy exchanges of fire overnight in the area. The fourth death was that of a Palestinian man, Tahrir Rizek, killed in an Arab village near Bait-ul-Moqaddas in a drive-by shooting blamed by hospital officials on Jewish settlers. It followed the death Sunday of terrorist settler leader Binyamin Kahane and his wife in a Palestinian ambush, sparking calls for revenge from his supporters. Some 2,500 people took to the streets in the West Bank town of Ramallah to mark the 36th anniversary of Fatah's first anti-Israeli attack. In Nablus, 3,000 Fatah supporters paraded, including some 50 men most wearing masks carrying assault rifles. The demonstrators burned an Israeli flag and fired in the air. The latest deaths brought the toll to 366, mainly Palestinians, since the Intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, started September 28. In the meantime, a senior leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas said in remarks published on Monday that the organization may resume suicide bomb attacks against Israeli targets in retribution for Palestinian casualties. Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, who was released from a Palestinian authority prison last week, also called on Palestinians waging a three-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation to launch an armed struggle. "Hamas has stepped up its operations and has carried out bomb attacks from afar to protect the lives of its fighters. We might be forced to use the old (suicide attack) methods if that is the only way to cause losses to the enemy," Rantissi told the United Arab Emirates' Arabic-language Al-Khaleej daily Hamas, which opposes the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, has taken responsibility for attacks that have killed or wounded scores of Israelis in recent years. During the uprising, Hamas has mostly confined its activities to carrying out attacks from a distance and calling for clashes. But it has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack last month wounded three Israeli soldiers. "The Intifada (uprising) is likely to continue for a long time and must move away from stones and proceed with military operations... If there is no balanced military power, then there must be a balanced deterrence," Rantissi said. Pope John Paul also on Monday urged all sides in the Middle East conflict to get back on the road to peace. The Pope told the faithful at his New Year's Day mass in St. Peter's Square that his envoy in the holy land had given Israeli and Palestinian authorities a copy of his message for the world day of peace, celebrated on January 1. "On this special day, we must think of the holy land, where 2000 years ago the angels proclaimed glory to god in the highest and peace to his people on earth'," the Pope said at the end of the mass.