JERUSALEM/WEST BANK/GAZA: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convenes cabinet amid worst violence escalation in months and tightened security ahead of national Memorial Day

Israeli PM Olmert convenes cabinet amid worst violence escalation in months and tightened security ahead of national Memorial Day. Israel's Peres urges Palestinian leadership to increase efforts to maintain calm while Palestinian PM Haniyeh condemns Israeli operations. Thousands of mourners in Jenin bury their dead. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened his cabinet on Sunday (April 22) amid one of the worst waves of a flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in months, during which eight Palestinians were killed in a number of incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the latest violence Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinian militants during an arrest raid in the West Bank town of Nablus earlier on Sunday, residents said. On Saturday (April 21) Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians during an army raid in the West Bank city of Jenin and one militant in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip. Among the Jenin dead was a Palestinian girl. The Israeli army said the air strike, only the second in Gaza since a November truce, targeted militants who had fired makeshift rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot, hitting a house. Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to step up efforts to control militant activity in order to maintain a shaky cease fire. "The major reason for it (escalation) is the disunity among the different (Palestinian) security forces, particularly in Gaza," Peres said at the start of a cabinet meeting. A top aide to Abbas said on Saturday that the Israeli actions jeopardised the Palestinian president's efforts to expand the truce from Gaza to the occupied West Bank as part of a U.S.-led peace push. Meanwhile, Israel has stepped up security in Jerusalem and its surrounding West Bank checkpoints ahead of the national Memorial Day to commemorate fallen soldiers and victims of a Palestinian uprising for statehood, slated to begin on sunday evening and will be followed by Independence Day celebrations. "The independence which we celebrate, not only as an expression of historical event 59 years ago, but also as an expression of deep appreciation for our ability to defend the independence in each of these 59 years," Olmert told his cabinet in Jerusalem. In Gaza, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamist faction Hamas condemned the latest surge of violence, saying it reveals Israel's political deception. "I express the condemnation of the government to the crimes of assassinations killings and liquidations conducted by the Israeli occupation forces. This is a new proof on the brutality of the occupation and the continued desire to shed Palestinian blood. These crimes reveal the political deception which is being practised on the Palestinian people through the political meetings and the Meetings of leaders," Haniyeh told Reuters Television in Gaza City. At a meeting in Cairo last week which Haniyeh attended, the Arab League named a working group headed by Egypt and Jordan to contact Israel over a 2002 Arab peace plan offering normal relations in return for land and a Palestinian state. Hamas has rejected Western demands it recognise Israel as a condition for dropping a crippling aid embargo on the Palestinian government. Elsewhere, in Jenin, thousands of mourners, including armed militants, took to the streets bury their dead, including a 17-year-old Palestinian girl who was shot by Israeli troops as she stood at her window in Jenin refugee camp, according to Palestinian medical workers. The army issued a statement in which it said it had launched an investigation into the girl's shooting and said that the findings would be brought before the military advocate general for consideration whether to charge anybody in the matter.

ITN Source | April 22, 2007

Tags:. .urged. .maintain. .jordan. .ability. .rockets