NABLUS, West Bank, 30 December 2002 — A Palestinian child was shot dead yesterday when Israeli troops opened fire in the reoccupied West Bank town of Tulkarm, and more violence loomed as Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon ordered the army to step up assassinations or arrests of ‘wanted’ Palestinians.

As Sharon ordered the army to step up killings, the press revealed details of the latest draft of a “road map” for Middle East peace, stressing there was little new in the US-backed plan set to be adopted after Israeli elections in January.

Israeli soldiers fired toward Palestinian protesters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday, killing an 11-year-old boy and wounding a cameraman on assignment for Associated Press Television News, witnesses said.

The boy, Abdel Karim Salameh, was killed in the morning by a live bullet in the head, said the director of the town’s hospital, Dr. Ahmed Abu Baker. A second boy, also 11, was injured by a rubber-coated steel pellet in the leg, the director said.

The boys were among a group of students walking home from school after end-of-semester exams, witnesses said.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, meanwhile, said troops have arrested more than 1,200 Palestinians in the past two months in what he described as an unprecedented campaign against suspected Palestinians. Palestinians say Israel is trying to scuttle any chance of a truce with its stepped-up raids.

The boys’ death came just a day after a nine-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead in the southern Gaza Strip.

Nine Palestinians were killed last Thursday alone by Israeli forces, while on Friday night two Palestinians killed four young Israeli men in a settlement near Hebron before being slain themselves.

Two Israeli soldiers were wounded when Palestinians fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a patrol in the southern Gaza Strip in an overnight attack claimed by armed wing of Hamas.

Meanwhile, Sharon said Friday night’s attack on the Jewish settlement of Otniel justified the army’s controversial policy of systematically tracking down and killing suspected Palestinians.

Sharon was responding to a warning by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, who reportedly said Israel must act with “utmost caution” when carrying out the so-called “targeted killings” of Palestinians.

Last month a senior military official said the army should give priority to trying to arrest Palestinians rather than kill them.As the violence looked set to escalate after weeks of relative calm, the Jerusalem Post revealed details of the latest draft of the Middle East peace “road map” drawn up by top diplomats of the so-called quartet, made up of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.

It said that little new was presented in the draft, whose finalization the United States has delayed, at Israel’s urging, until after the Jewish state’s Jan. 28 elections.

It said in the first stage, from January to June 2003, Israeli commitments would include a total freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the dismantling of outposts built since March 2000, a pullback to positions held before the uprising began in September 2000 and an end to attacks on civilians and the demolition of buildings.

On the Palestinian side, the plan calls for elections as soon as possible, security and political reforms, fiscal transparency and a “visible effort to arrest, disrupt, restrain terrorists.”

The second phase, from June to December next year, would include a quartet-mediated conference to establish a Palestinian state with provisional borders, while the Palestinians appoint a prime minister, ratify a constitution and reinforce reforms.

In stage three, lasting a year from January 2004, both sides would attend a conference to thrash out thorny final status issues such as borders, Jewish settlements, Jerusalem and the question of Palestinian refugees.

The paper said that moving from stages two to three would depend on whether the quartet judged both sides had fulfilled their commitments.

The daily added that the implementation was not on a step-by-step basis, as Israel had hoped, but calls for both sides to undertake their commitments in parallel, which Israel fears will mean it makes concessions while the Palestinians drag their feet.