Intifada anniversary poses fresh challenge to ceasefire

A fledgling truce between Israel and the Palestinians was facing a fresh challenge today, the first anniversary of the outbreak of violence.

Several radical Palestinian groups opposed to compromise with Israel are planning mass protests and Israeli Arabs are to hold a solidarity rally in the town of Nazareth.

The fighting erupted on September 28 2000, when Ariel Sharon, now Israel’s Prime Minister, visited a contested holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City.

In the 12 months since then, 647 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 177 on the Israeli side.

Blood was still being shed yesterday despite pledges by both sides to enforce the ceasefire, sought by the United States as it tries to bring Arab and Muslim states into its anti-terror coalition.

Palestinians accused Israel of trying to undermine a ceasefire agreement reached on Wednesday between Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

‘‘It’s an attempt by the Israeli army and some people inside the Israeli Government to blow up and destroy the results of the Peres-Arafat meeting and we hold the Israeli government responsible for this dangerous escalation,’’ said Arafat spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh.

An official in Sharon’s office said the Israeli troops had only been responding to Palestinian attacks.

‘‘A ceasefire is not selective, it does not only apply to civilians but also to any attack on our soldiers,’’ he said.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Peres and Arafat agreed to resume security co-operation and take a series of confidence-building measures. Israel promised to ease its stifling closures of Palestinian communities in the coming days.

The army demolished several homes in the strip’s Rafah refugee camp overnight, in response to a bomb attack on Wednesday on an Israeli army post on the edge of the camp, along the Israeli-Egyptian border.

Three soldiers were wounded in the blast, for which the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility.

Just before midnight on Wednesday, Israeli tanks and a bulldozer moved toward Rafah as troops fired from tank-mounted machine guns at the camp, Palestinian security officials said. Tanks also fired shells, they said.

Palestinian gunmen returned fire, and the fighting lasted for more than three hours, the officials said.

Three camp residents were killed and 22 wounded, including four who were in serious condition, doctors said. Tanks drove about 100 meters into Palestinian territory during the raid.

The Israeli official said the force was in a strip designated as under Israeli control. He added that Peres had warned Arafat at the meeting that the destroyed border post would be rebuilt and Palestinians should not make any attempt to prevent the work.

He said that Israeli personnel had been on their way to rebuild the post when they came under fire.

‘‘We went in and destroyed the building from where they fired, we had already warned them. If these talks are so important to them they have to stop this shooting, every time there is trouble we will react severely,’’ the official said.

The army said it demolished several houses that had served as cover for weapons smugglers and that underneath one house soldiers found the entrance to a tunnel used in the attack on the military outpost a day earlier.

Yesterday troops manning a watchtower next to Rafah shot dead a 14-year-old boy, said Ali Musa, a doctor at the local hospital.

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot a Palestinian man in the head near the town of Deir el Balah, a Palestinian security official said. The wounded man died in the hospital.