Less than a day after the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, returned home from a three-day visit to the United States insisting he had won support for his "no-negotiation-sunder-fire" mantra, violence surged yesterday in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a Palestinian policeman was killed, and 20 Palestinians were injured in protests.
Palestinian hospital and police sources said that the officer, named as Mr Osama Salim (25), was shot and killed in clashes with Israeli troops near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom. An Israeli army spokesman denied soldiers had shot Salim, insisting there had been no Israeli gunfire in the area.
Palestinians also reported 17 people injured as youths clashed with Israeli troops and burned an effigy of Mr Sharon near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Israeli troops fired rubber-coated steel bullets and teargas grenades at the demonstrators, who were protesting at Israel's blockade of Palestinian areas and the paralysing travel restrictions imposed by the Israeli army, which are aimed at protecting Jewish settlers from drive-by shooting attacks.
In Gaza, Israeli troops fired at stone throwers near the Karni border checkpoint between Israel and the strip. Palestinian hospital staff reported three people injured. The Israeli army reported that Palestinians fired two anti-tank missiles at its troops near the Gush Katif settlement block in Gaza, but there were no injuries.
On returning on Thursday night to Israel, Mr Sharon said he had won complete agreement that terror was a threat to Middle East stability and that peace talks could not resume until Palestinian violence ended.
Palestinian leaders, though, vowed yesterday that they would not be cowed by Mr Sharon. "We are not afraid of Sharon", said Mr Marwan Barghouti, who heads Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank. "We will defeat his government."