Israel's foreign ministerurged Palestinians to crack down on militants after a soldier'sbody was found in northern Israel today.
The death threatened a relative calm that has prevailed inthe month since Palestinian militants declared a ceasefire vitalto a US-backed peace plan that Prime Minister Ariel Sharonwill discuss with US President George W. Bush tomorrow.
Bedouin trackers and police found the 20-year-old soldier'sbody in an olive grove as Sharon began a US visit with Bush,who has said Israel's construction of a West Bank security fencecould pose a problem in implementing the peace "road map".
Israeli troops fired rubber bullets to break up a protest byIsraelis, Palestinians and foreigners who surged towards thefence and tried to tear down a gate.
At least five people, including an American, were wounded inthe clash near the village of Anin, the witnesses said.
Palestinians fear the fence, which cuts into the West Bank,will set the boundaries of their envisaged state. Israel saysthe barrier is necessary to keep out suicide bombers.
Israeli police said evidence gathered where the soldier'sbody was found between two Israeli Arab villages showed it was"a nationalist or terrorist murder".
"We have no indication if it is Israeli Arabs orPalestinians," said police spokesman Gil Kleiman. Policedeclined to give further details until an investigation wascomplete.
Although no Palestinian militant group claimedresponsibility, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom urgedPalestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to crack down onmilitants, a ministry spokesman said.
"We need to see a real fight against terrorism. It is notenough to talk about it," the spokesman quoted Shalom as saying.
Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan said: "Israeltries to justify every failure by pointing their finger at thePalestinian Authority."
Despite controversy over Israel's security fence, theparliamentary finance committee reallotted 750 million shekels($171 million) from the government budget to build the barrier.
Shalom said the fence, a concrete wall in some places and awire mesh with electronic sensors in others, was "veryimportant" because "it prevents the extremists from destroyingthe peace process".
In a bid to ease Sharon's meeting with Bush, Israel said onSunday it would release 540 Palestinian prisoners, includingmembers of militant groups, and remove several roadblocks in theWest Bank.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan welcomed the Israeliprisoner decision, saying such steps "help facilitate progresstoward peace". But Palestinians seek freedom for all 6,000Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Mohammed al-Hindi, a leader of the militant group IslamicJihad, said that if Israel did not do so, the truce haltingattacks could collapse.
The fence and the prisoners remain obstacles to progress onthe road map, which is intended to end violence linked to a34-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence and establisha Palestinian state by 2005.