Israel lifts WB, Gaza closure as Qorei finalises cabinet

The army had sealed off the Palestinian territories on Friday evening at the beginning of the Rosh Hashanah weekend with a view to preventing would-be Palestinian attackers from crossing into Israel.

But the seemingly airtight military blockade failed to prevent the killing of two Israelis, including a seven-month-old baby girl, on Friday night in the Negohot settlement near the West Bank town of Hebron.

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The shooting was claimed by the radical Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad.

In the Gaza Strip, the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) also claimed responsibility for a mortar attack Sunday on the Gush Katif settlement bloc, inflicting no casualties.

State radio reported Monday that in the internal security service, Shin Beth, had recorded around 40 alerts every day during the Jewish holiday.

The weekend coincided with the third anniversary of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, that has so far left 3,497 people dead, including 2,612 Palestinians and 822 Israelis, according to an AFP count.

To mark the occasion, militant groups renewed their vows to continue the Intifada while thousands of Palestinians took to the streets to protest against the Israeli occupation.

In Israel, a group of young Arab citizens marked the anniversary by launching a petition urging Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to end the violence, the Maariv daily reported Monday.

"Bus bombs kill just as blindly as missiles," said Samah Abdelrahman, a 17-year-old Bedouin girl from the northern region of Galilee who launched the petition.

She said Israeli Arabs would stage a large pacifist demonstration soon and that the petition would eventually be delivered to Arafat at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel's 1.2-million-strong Israeli Arab community accounts for 19 percent of the Jewish state's total population.

The majority are Palestinians who stayed on their land when the state of Israel was created in 1948, unlike those who fled or were expelled from their homes.

Meanwhile in Ramallah, Qorei was Monday finalizing the composition of his new cabinet by holding meetings with various officials, said his office and Arafat's top aide Nabil Abu Rudeina.

Arafat' Fatah party Central Committee has approved Qorei's cabinet list of 24 names, of which 12 will be filled with new faces and 15 were given to Fatah members.

The key post of security chief and interior minister goes to General Nasser Yussef, a close Arafat associate and long-standing Fatah member.