JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Israeli occupation troops remained in and around major Palestinian cities in the West Bank Sunday in the most comprehensive offensive on Palestinian-ruled areas in a year of fighting against Israeli occupation. (Read photo caption below) Occupation soldiers continued to battle with Palestinian Resistance men overnight after eight Palestinian fighters and civilians were killed Saturday and Israeli missiles battered a building in Bethlehem, wounding eight others.
Israeli officials stressed the occupation army's entry into five Palestinian-ruled cities and a town this week did not signal the imminent demise of the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian officials accused Israel of wrecking attempts to find a way back to stalled Middle East peacemaking.
``The Israeli army has a plan to escalate militarily and it is pursuing this plan, in direct challenge to all international efforts to calm the situation and to revive the peace process,'' Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told reporters in Gaza after meeting Russian envoy Andrei Vdovin.
Israel said the incursions aim at apprehending Palestinian militants planning attacks on Israelis. It pledged to withdraw troops wherever the Authority acted to thwart such assaults.
Israeli officials could not say how long the operation, which the United States criticized Friday, would last. But Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he did not know ``of any decision to bring about the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.''
The raids followed the assassination Wednesday of ultra-nationalist Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi, the first ever killing of an Israeli minister by Palestinians.
PHOTO CAPTIONS:
Israeli tanks take up positions at the entrance of the West bank town of Bethlehem October 20, 2001. Israeli troops killed four Palestinians as they advanced into two Palestinian-ruled cities early to retaliate for the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister this week. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)