Israeli Settlers Wounded by Palestinian Gunmen in West Bank

Two Israeli settlers were wounded Wednesday in the West Bank by Palestinian gunmen several hours after the Palestinians accepted a U.S. ceasefire plan to end more than eight months of bloody Palestinian-Israeli conflicts, Israel Radio reported.

The report said that a 17-year-old girl from the West Bank settlement of Ofra, near Ramallah, was hit in the neck by Palestinians firing from a house in the nearby village of Ein Yabrud.

The girl was standing at a bus shelter near Ofra when the shooting attack took place, it said, adding that the girl has been sent to hospital for treatment.

A second person sustained lighter wounds and was treated at the scene by medics.

Several mobile houses in the community, close to the vicinity of the attack, were also damaged in the shooting.

The report also said that a large number of Israeli soldiers were engaged in door-to-door search in the area in pursuit of the assailants.

The incident took place after both Israel and the Palestinians agreed to accept the U.S. ceasefire proposal and are scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss ways of implementing the plan.

In another incident against the backdrop of the efforts to end the dragging Israeli-Palestinian violence, a 40-year-old Greek priest was shot to death late Tuesday night while driving on the road linking the French Hill neighborhood in northern Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim in the West Bank.

Officials to Meet on Implementing Cease-fire

Israeli and Palestinian officials will meet on Wednesday to discuss ways to implement the cease-fire proposal put forward by U.S. CIA Director George Tenet, Israeli Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar said.

The meeting is a follow-up one to the 11-hour meeting late Tuesday night between Tenet and Palestinian National Authority Chairman (PNA) Yasser Arafat, during which Arafat agreed to accept the proposal in principle.

However, Palestinian officials said that they still have reservations about the proposal regarding its provisions for setting up buffer zones and a clause requiring the PNA to arrest activists of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the radical group of Islamic Jihad (holy war) who were suspected of terror attacks in the past few months.

The Palestinians have voiced opposition to both points, but said they would act to deter future attacks against Israeli targets.

The Palestinians also wanted to add a timetable to the provisions calling for Israel to lift restrictions on the Palestinian territories and pull its forces back to positions they held before the violence, which broke out late last September.

Saar told Israel Radio that a short time after all firing halts, the Israeli army will redeploy in the field and return to " routine."

"From our standpoint, there must be no divergence from it," Saar said, referring to the document. "We also have reservations of one type or another."

"The moment that firing ends entirely, within a short time, changes will begin to be seen in the field. There are two parameters, deployment of forces, and return to normalization of life. Of course, everything hinges on whether there will be quiet."

He said that only after a cooling-off period will confidence- building measures begin to be instituted.

Tenet arrived in the region a week ago in a bid to nail down a lasting ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians following a fatal suicide bomb attack in Israel's Tel Aviv on June 1, which killed 20 Israelis, most of them teenage girls.

His mediatory efforts, joined by delegations of the European Union, have helped stabilize the fragile situation in the region after more than eight months of bloody conflicts.

More than 570 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed since the outbreak of the conflict, triggered by Israeli violation of an Islamic holy site in East Jerusalem late last September.






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