Nov. 3 - Israeli and Palestinian leaders pushed to enforce a cease-fire
agreement today even as the latest round of violence claimed more lives in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A car bomb exploded near the Mahane

After a car bomb attack in central Jerusalem killed two on Thursday,
Israeli officials were anticipating the worst after the traditional Muslim
Friday prayers.
But though there were outbreaks of violence, which included the
Israeli army firing tank shells at Palestinians using a heavy machine gun
near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the violence was less intense than
in recent days.
Witnesses said Israeli tanks had moved back from flashpoints in Gaza
and the Israeli prime minister's security adviser, Danny Yatom,
acknowledged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would not be able to
immediately implement a truce reached with Israeli senior statesman Shimon
Peres on Wednesday.
"It is true there is still gunfire, it is true there are still
clashes. Along with this I assess, from what I know, there are attempts on
the Palestinian side and there is an intention to establish calm on the
ground," he said on Israeli radio.
In what is being viewed as a sign of Palestinian commitment to ending
the violence, Arafat today accepted an invitation to meet with President
Clinton in Washington. Clinton's spokesman said the president also
expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the near future.
The acceptance came after senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat
met with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Washington today.
Trouble on Friday
In today's violence, a 21-year-old Palestinian man was killed in the West
Bank town of Tulkarm.
A second Palestinian, 18, died of wounds sustained in clashes with
soldiers in the West Bank village of Hizma, bringing the death toll in
five weeks of unrest to at least 170 people. Almost all of them have been
Palestinians.
The Israeli army said its forces had not fired live or rubber-coated
bullets in the Tulkarm incident and that the man had apparently been shot
in the back, suggesting he may have been killed by Palestinian gunfire.
A spokesman for the Israeli army said there were eight other cases of
shootings at Israeli troops in Gaza and the West Bank, adding that Israeli
soldiers returned fire in three of them.
Medical sources in Hebron said at least 30 Palestinians were hurt
when Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and threw stun grenades
at stone-throwers. At least eight Palestinians were injured elsewhere in
the West Bank, hospital officials said, and the Israeli army said five of
its soldiers were hurt.
The current spate of violence is widely believed to have started when
Ariel Sharon, leader of the Likud party, made a controversial visit to the
site five weeks ago.
In another sign that the Palestinians were trying to cool passions,
the Islamic Jihad group, which has claimed responsibility for the
Jerusalem marketplace bombing Thursday, said it had put off a rally it had
called for in Gaza today by a week at the request of the Palestinian
Authority.

Israel's Barak has been facing opposition from right-wing Israeli leaders
who say Arafat had not personally urged his people to curb violence as
Israel says was stipulated under Wednesday's deal with Peres, with whom
Arafat shared the the Nobel Peace Prize for the 1993 Oslo interim accords.
"The prime minister…regrets that Chairman Arafat did not find the
ability to announce, in his voice and in public, the agreed upon
formulation but notes that the real test is implementation of the
understandings on the ground," Barak said in a statement.
The Palestinian Authority issued a statement urging Palestinians to
use peaceful means in their struggle for independence against Israeli
occupation.
Arafat said he was waiting to see Barak's actions under the truce,
which, if implemented, would honor the terms of an understanding Barak and
Arafat reached at a U.S.-brokered emergency summit in Sharm el-Sheikh,
Egypt, on Oct. 17.
That agreement quickly collapsed.

One of those who died in Thursday's bomb explosion in central Jerusalem,
was the daughter of a Yitzhak Levy, leader of the opposition National
Religious Party, a right-wing party closely associated with Jewish
settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Levy's daughter, Ayelet, was buried late on Thursday in a funeral
attended by much of the country's political elite.
Hours after the bombing, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim
Sneh said that the Palestinian Authority was responsible because it had
freed Islamic militants from jail.
But Palestinian officials denounced the charge, saying the militants
were jailed for their activities against the Palestinian Authority.

ABCNEWS.com's Lucrezia Cuen in London, Reuters and The Associated Press
contributed to this report.

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