Jewish settlers urge retaliation

Jewish settlers protested outside Sharon's residence

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Jewish settlers are calling on the Israeli prime minister to retaliate after another settler was shot dead.

A 63-year-old Israeli settler died Thursday after he was shot by a Palestinian gunman as he drove his car near the village of Baka el-Sharkiyeh north of Tulkarem on the West Bank, Israeli authorities said.

An army spokeswoman said Zvi Shelef was shot in the head and died while being taken to a hospital. She said initial reports indicated that the gunmen fired from a passing car.

Later in the day, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said one Palestinian was fatally shot and another was critically injured by Israeli soldiers near the village of Hizmeh in the West Bank.

While settlers demanded an end to the ceasefire, Palestinians have dismissed Sharon's cease fire call as a publicity stunt, blaming Israel for the violence.

Other deaths included that of a Palestinian teenager Thursday in a clash with Israeli forces, a Palestinian child who died a month after being injured in a Gaza explosion and an Israeli settler shot in the West Bank.

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Some Jewish settlers are becoming alarmed, some increasingly desperate and some increasingly radical, CNN's Jerrold Kessel reported.

One settler said: "(Palestinian Authority leader) Yasser Arafat is a murderer… He wants to get rid of one big settlement -- the state of Israel."

Protesters outside Sharon's residence made their demands clear.

"We are saying to Ariel Sharon that if he does not act quickly and forcefully we will have to see to it in a democratic way that there will be another prime minister," a protester told Kessel.

When one of Sharon's ministers tried to address mourners at a settler's funeral, Israel television showed the dead man's sister attacking the Sharon government's self-declared policy of unilateral restraint.

"Stop sitting idly by. We don't want you eulogising us. War is no shame. War is an obligation," she shouted.

Through the past eight months of battles it has been critical for the settlers not only to portray themselves as Israel's front line but also as being in the heart of the Israeli consensus, Kessel said.

The more the settlers are able to project themselves as merging into mainstream Israel, the harder it is -- they feel -- for a real border ever to come between them and other Israelis.

However, the settlers remain an immediate challenge to Sharon.

When he went to pay his respects at the home of a settler killed this week, the family turned on him.

"You of all people -- we have to tell you what to do? We elected you in a time or war. Act now," one woman told him.

Sharon responded: "I'll do what I have to do when I decide it's time. It's my responsibility, not yours."

In Brussels, Arafat accused Israel of using "illegal arms, gas missiles, F-16 planes and other instruments of war against our people and our structures, damaging our agricultural lands."

But he also said, "In spite of all the difficulties that we are up against, we still rest our hopes in the peace process, a process which was launched by (former Israeli Prime Minister) Yitzhak Rabin, who paid for it with his life."

Arafat was in Brussels to sign a 60 million-euro ($51 million) aid package from the European Union.

Meanwhile, U.S. envoy William Burns left Israel after failing to get an agreement from the Israelis and Palestinians on a timeline for adopting the recommendations of the Mitchell Report on Mideast peace.

Sharon is said to favour a piecemeal approach to implementing the Mitchell recommendations starting with a ceasefire.

The Palestinians have said they want the full package of recommendations implemented at once.