Islamic militants, blaming Israel for the death of a Palestinian early today, apparently while handling a bomb, vowed at a mass funeral in southern Gaza to avenge his death by attacking Israelis in Tel Aviv.
Violence flared in the Gaza Strip and West Bank overnight, overshadowing efforts to arrange talks between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres which might lead to a truce in the Palestinian uprising.
Izz el-Din Abu Issa, 24, was killed in a blast in a gunmen's hideout in Gaza. Officials said he died when explosives went off prematurely, but some gunmen accused Israel of killing the young men, an activist in Arafat's Fatah faction.
More than 5,000 Palestinians from different factions cried for revenge as they carried Abu Issa's body, shrouded in a red, black, green and white Palestinian flag, through the streets of Rafah and on to the cemetery for burial.
A Reuterscorrespondent at the scene of his death said the two rooms of the hideout were blackened by the explosion, which appeared to have occurred inside the abandoned building.
"We will soon teach the Israelis a new lesson about love for our homeland and we will do it in Tel Aviv," Palestinian militants from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups shouted through loudspeakers at the funeral.