JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Israeli occupation soldiers killed two Palestinians in gun battles in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron on Sunday, providing a violent backdrop for efforts to arrange talks on ending more than 11 months of bloodshed. (Read photo caption below) Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres warned against unrealistic expectations that a meeting being arranged with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would end the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
With diplomatic efforts intensifying, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana was to arrive in the region late on Sunday to help lay the groundwork for a Peres-Arafat meeting, possibly to be held in Italy at the end of the week.
``We don't want to exaggerate or heighten expectations, on the other hand we don't want to produce another disappointment so we are preparing it as carefully as possible,'' Peres told reporters during a visit to a Tel Aviv school.
``We are looking for the right time and the right venue,'' Peres said.
Previous rounds of talks between Peres and Arafat have done little to curb the violence that began last September after peace Middle East negotiations stalled.
ISRAELI TANK ENTERS HEBRON
Witnesses said that during the clashes in Hebron, an Israeli tank briefly entered a Palestinian-ruled area of predominantly Palestinian city.
Some 400 militant Jews live in Hebron among 120,000 Palestinian residents.
The occupation army said one of its soldiers and another Israeli were wounded in fighting on Saturday which disrupted the first day of the Palestinian school year by preventing dozens of students from attending classes.
In the Gaza Strip on Saturday, an armored Israeli bulldozer briefly entered a Palestinian-ruled area and destroyed a house near the Khan Younis refugee camp from where the Israeli occupation army claimed Palestinian Resistance men had shot an occupation soldier.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Palestinians take up positions during an exchange of fire with Israeli occupation soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron August 31, 2001. The end of Israel's reoccupation of part of a Palestinian-ruled West Bank town appeared to have set the stage for a possible new round of Israeli-Palestinian truce talks. (Nayef Hashlamoun/Reuters)
- Aug 31 3:17 PM ET