A Palestinian woman blew herself up at an Israeli checkpoint in a suicide bombing that lent urgency to peace efforts given new momentum by a proposal from Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
Two hours after the attack, Israeli helicopters fired two missiles at targets on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus early on Thursday. One person was slightly hurt.
The woman had detonated explosives strapped to her body after an Israeli policeman inspecting her vehicle at a West Bank checkpoint near the border with Israel had asked her to get out of the car when she failed to present identity papers.
Israel Radio said two Palestinian men in the car were killed either from the blast or from bullets fired by soldiers after the explosion. The deaths could not be immediately confirmed, but police said earlier they were in critical condition.
The blast, which wounded three policeman near the central Israeli town of Modi'in, shook windows in houses two km (a mile) away. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the bombing which followed a brief lull in violence.
Crown Prince Abdullah's proposal for an Arab-Israeli peace deal gained momentum as Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler told a European Union envoy he expected other Arab leaders to adopt his land-for-peace initiative at an Arab League summit in March.
Hailed by Palestinians and cautiously welcomed in Israel, the proposal has won wide backing, including in Washington.
On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers killed three armed infiltrators near Israel's border with Egypt and a Palestinian killed an Israeli businessman in an attack claimed by two armed groups linked to President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.
But in a sign of growing cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians, field commanders from both sides were due to meet on Thursday in the Gaza Strip, two days after a high-level security meeting ended with a decision to hold future talks.
EU ENVOY UPBEAT
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the Crown Prince had told him at a meeting in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah on Wednesday that he would consult Arab leaders ahead of an Arab League meeting in Beirut in late March.
"He (the prince) is going to coordinate his ideas with the Arab countries...and he expects at the Arab League summit they will be approved," Solana told Reuters.
The Crown Prince last week aired an initiative resurrecting an Arab offer to normalise relations with Israel in return for a full withdrawal from Arab lands occupied in the 1967 war.
It contained little new but it has added momentum to diplomatic efforts to end violence that has raged since a Palestinian uprising against occupation erupted in September 2000 after peace talks became stalled.
At least 896 Palestinians and 279 Israelis have been killed.
One Saudi official said after Solana's meeting in Jeddah: "We expect the European Union to play a bigger role in the Middle East peace process in light of today's talks."
PALESTINIAN, ISRAELI INTEREST
Solana, who flew from Jeddah to Cairo as part of a round of shuttle diplomacy in the region, said Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had both welcomed the Saudi initiative in talks with him earlier in the week.
US President George W. Bush has also praised it.
Sharon has come under growing pressure from the political right and left in Israel to end the violence after a surge in the Israeli death toll in the past two weeks.
Sharon told Solana he was ready to meet Saudi officials to discuss the peace proposal. But right-wingers have made clear they will oppose any proposal calling for a return to pre-1967 borders, saying it would threaten Israel's security.
Arafat said he fully supported the Saudi initiative. But the militant Islamic group Hamas said it opposed it because it did not require the return of all of what they call historic Palestine, which takes in territory that now makes up Israel.
(China Daily February 28, 2002)
