Jerusalme — Three Palestinians were killed in separate incidents Saturday, two of them by Israeli fire, as Palestinian militants warned the Jewish state to prepare for more attacks.
The speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Ahmed Qureia, said the new Israeli government under hardline Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon would make it nearly impossible to make peace.
"Because of the contradicting forces inside the government I don't see any possibility for an understanding that can achieve the aspirations of the Palestinian people," Qureia said.
Sharon's new coalition government will include the center-left Labor Party, which says it wants to promote a peace agenda despite Sharon's opposition to more concessions to the Palestinians. Two far-right parties also announced they would join Sharon's government.
The bloody spiral of violence that began in late September has claimed over 400 lives, including 345 Palestinians and 58 Israeli Jews.
On Saturday, a 43-year-old Palestinian woman was shot on the street in the West Bank town of Il Bireh, which faces the Jewish settlement of Psagot.
The army said it opened fire in the direction of the settlement, which had come under fire by Palestinian gunmen, but that it was unaware of any civilians caught in the cross fire.
In the Palestinian village of Hawara, east of the West Bank city of Nablus, a Palestinian stone thrower was killed by Israeli soldiers, the army said. Three other Palestinians were wounded, one of whom was evacuated by helicopter to an Israeli hospital, the army said.
Ahmed Allan, a 25-year-old Palestinian, was found dead on the side of the road just south of Nablus Saturday, minutes after he called his family asking for a ride, his brother, Mohammed Allan, said.
Relatives said they believe Jewish settlers from nearby Shilo shot him. A spokesman from the settler movement said he was unaware of any such incident.
A spokesman for the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement, whose military wing has killed scores of Israelis in attacks, warned Saturday that more violence was imminent.
"Our fighters will fight them (Israelis) in their homes and their neighborhoods. We will terrorize our enemy and we are going to continue the path of resistance that began five months ago," Hassan Yusef said.
There have been an increasing number of attacks on Israeli targets in recent weeks, including the detonation of a bomb in a taxi van Thursday in northern Israel by a suspected Palestinian militant. The explosion killed an Israeli and injured nine people.
"I think the incidents of the last few days obligate us to increase our response and to step up pressure on the terrorists that carry out these acts and those that send them," Israel's military chief Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said.
The army said that as part of their offensive they had arrested a Hamas activist in the West Bank town of Hebron Saturday.
Qureia, the Palestinian parliament speaker, called Mofaz's comments "dangerous, a call for war and violence."
Also Saturday, five Israelis were injured lightly by a firebomb thrown toward their bus near the Palestinian town of Jericho in the West Bank, the army said.
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