JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) -Israeli occupation forces held fast to positions in and around five Palestinian cities, defying repeated U.S. calls for a full withdrawal from areas occupied after Palestinian militants killed an Israeli cabinet minister on October 17.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres meanwhile said he was drafting a new Middle East peace initiative, a step, observers say could risk a new rift with right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
On another front, The United States said Israel's demolition of four Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem on Tuesday was ``highly provocative'' and an obstacle to restoring calm between Israelis and Palestinians.
DEFYING THE UNITED STATES
Israel has dismissed calls to pull its troops out of five West Bank towns and sent its tanks and bulldozers into Palestinian-controlled areas of Gaza.
Defying the United States, which has made clear its desire for a full pull-out, senior Israeli officials said the army would withdraw from its positions only when the Palestinians guaranteed security.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said this includes the arrest and handover of those behind the assassination of the ultra-nationalist cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi.
On Tuesday, Israeli tanks rolled onto Palestinian farmland in Gaza, while at least two Palestinian buildings in east Jerusalem were also destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. (Read photo caption below)
Israeli authorities claimed they had been built illegally.
A Palestinian legislator called the demolitions on Tuesday an attempt to Judaize Arab parts of the city. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as a capital for a future state. Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its unified capital.
Washington, keen to see peace in the Middle East as it fights its war on terrorism, has urged Israel to continue pulling out, following the withdrawal of troops from Bethlehem and Beit Jala on Sunday.
PEACE INITIATIVE
Peres and Sharon, sporadically at odds with each other in a broad coalition government, were poised for fresh disagreement on Wednesday over a possible weekend meeting in Spain between the leftwing foreign minister and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Sharon has vetoed some past meetings between the two.
Arafat told reporters in Rome he would be willing to meet, but Peres played down the prospects of ending more than a year of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The two last met on September 26 to reaffirm a truce which has never taken hold.
Peres and Sharon were expected to meet on Wednesday.
Peres would not divulge details of the proposal but the Maariv daily printed what it said were some main points, including the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, which Sharon has opposed in the past.

PHOTO CAPTION:
An Israeli peace activist, with the Israeli flag tied on his head, walks between 925 coffins set up by an Israeli peace activist group at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv Tuesday, Oct. 30 2001. The coffins represent the Israelis (white coffins) and Palestinians (black coffins) killed in the last 13 months of violence. Israel on Monday marked six years since an Israeli extremist assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after a peace rally in this Square in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/ Eitan Hess-Ashkenazi)
- Oct 30 5:48 AM ET