Violence continues in Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM -- Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinians in the West Bank on Thursday, while in the Gaza Strip troops divided the territory into three parts, restricting the movement of more than 1 million Palestinians.\nThe operations appeared to be part of Israel's stepped-up efforts against the militant Islamic group Hamas, which killed four soldiers in an attack on a tank Saturday in Gaza.\nDespite the violence, Israelis and Palestinians have been holding increased contacts on the possibility of a cease-fire, though no breakthroughs have been achieved.\nIn London, William Burns, a State Department official, met Palestinian Cabinet ministers on Wednesday to discuss a U.S.-backed peace plan that envisions the creation of a Palestinian state in about three years.\nBurns told the Palestinians that formal discussions on the plan would not resume until after Israel forms a new government, a process that could take several more weeks, and would also depend on developments in Iraq, said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, one of the participants.\nThe Palestinians asked the United States to send international monitors in the meantime to protect their civilians during Israeli military offensives, but Burns said Washington did not support such an idea.\nIn the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian and wounded his grandfather as the two walked home from a nearby mosque, neighbors said. The army said the men were part of a group throwing firebombs at troops.\nTroops are conducting a massive manhunt in the city, the West Bank's largest. Israeli radio said 40 Palestinian suspects had been rounded up there since Wednesday night.\nResidents said Israeli soldiers went door-to-door through the narrow streets of the Old City looking for suspects, and called through loudspeakers for Palestinians to hand over wanted men.\nThe troops used small explosive charges to blow the locks off shops and a goldsmith's workshop was destroyed. Such shops use chemicals, including acids, that can also be used in bombmaking, and the soldiers have torn the structures down in previous raids.\nSoldiers also entered the town of Tulkarem early Thursday in an apparent search for militants and killed a 24-year-old Palestinian. The army said the man was armed, but Palestinians said he was an unarmed Hamas supporter who happened to be standing near the Palestinian wanted by Israel.\nIn the Gaza Strip, the scene of most of the recent violence, Israeli soldiers built dirt barricades, blocking Gaza's main north-south road and carving the territory into three parts.\nAs in the past, Palestinians sought to evade the barriers by traveling along a narrow strip of beachfront to reach their jobs, visit hospitals or take care of other business.\nSubhi Abu Assad, 48, was desperate to get three tons of squash to market before it went bad. His solution was to remove the squash from his truck and put it on a trailer bed, attached to a tractor, which he drove along the beach.\n"It normally takes about an hour to an hour-and-a-half to go to market and come back," he said. "We started at seven this morning and it will probably take all day."\nThe army said its operation in the Gaza Strip was in response to Palestinian rockets fired from northern Gaza at the Israeli town of Sderot on Wednesday. One Israeli was injured.\nIn southern Gaza, the army destroyed what it described as a hut used previously by Palestinian militants firing rockets at a nearby Jewish settlement. The army said no one lived there, but the Palestinians said it was home to 12 people.\nSince the attack on the Israeli tank Saturday, 29 Palestinians have been killed, including at least eight Hamas members.\nIsraeli authorities approved construction of 126 houses in Efrat, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Kobi Bleich, a Housing Ministry spokesman, said there was a demand for additional homes in Efrat as the population continued to grow.\nPalestinians claim all of the West Bank and Gaza for a future state, and are seeking the removal of the nearly 150 Jewish settlements and their more than 225,000 residents.