The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, in his first public reaction to Mr Yasser Arafat's call for an end to armed attacks on Israelis, has said the Palestinian leader must back up his words with deeds.
Mr Sharon, who has called Mr Arafat "irrelevant", said in dismissive tones yesterday that he only watched excerpts of the televised speech to the Palestinian people on Sunday because "I thought it was unnecessary for me to see it". Speaking to members of his right-wing Likud party, Mr Sharon said: "When it comes to the security of Israel and its citizens, we relate only to deeds, not words."
However, Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, adopted a wait-and-see attitude. "We'll know in a few days" if his words were to have any effect, he said. "The main difficulty is the degree of credibility that can be placed in his words. He must prove that what he said he will do."
In the latest development on his clampdown, Mr Arafat said he had closed 13 Islamist offices in Gaza and 29 in the West Bank.
In the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 12-year-old boy yesterday, a Palestinian doctor said, adding that there were no clashes at the time. The Israeli military said it was checking the report.
Israeli troops also yesterday killed a Hamas activist and shot two Palestinian plainclothes policemen, killing one, and security men detained the leading Palestinian figure in East Jerusalem.
Mr Yacoub Dakidak, a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank town of Hebron, was shot by Israeli forces outside his home in the Tufah neighbourhood. Mr Mahmoud Ghazal, a spokesman for the movement in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, said: "We cannot accept [Arafat's ceasefire] while the Israelis are not committed to a similar agreement."
In a joint manifesto issued yesterday, Hamas and Islamic Jihad rejected Mr Arafat's call for an end to suicide bombings inside Israel "proper" and also said that US citizens were a target because their government was an "enemy of the Palestinian people".
The shooting of two Palestinian policemen took place as they were said to be on a mission to apprehend suspects.
Meanwhile, Dr Sari Nusseibeh, a moderate who succeeded the late Faisal Husseini as the senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official in Jerusalem, was detained for about 45 minutes for ignoring an Israeli ban on a reception marking Eid al-Fitr, the feast ending the Ramadan fast.
Mr Nusseibeh and his lawyer, Mr Jawad Boulos, a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Nazareth, were taken from the premises of the old Imperial Hotel just inside the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem.
After his release, Dr Nusseibeh said: "I just gave a statement," and shrugged off the incident. His detention was later described by a spokesman for the US State Department, Mr Richard Boucher, as "provocative".
The Israeli Interior Minister, Mr Uzi Landau, a hardline member of Likud who had prohibited the gathering, warned that such a reception could contribute to "the loss of our sovereignty in Jerusalem. There's a whole series of activities which are in truth terror activities, and part of these activities are receptions."
European officials accredited to the Palestinian Authority, including Ireland's representative, Ms Isolde Moylan, visited Mr Arafat in Ramallah to mark Eid al-Fitr. He reportedly appreciated the EU's personal message of support.
