The Israeli occupation army killed a senior Islamic Jihad resistance man on Saturday and a occupation soldier died in a bomb attack later, raising the specter of a surge in violence as a U.S. peace envoy prepared to visit the region.
Islamic Jihad issued a statement in Beirut claiming responsibility for the bombing on a road Israeli occupation troops were patrolling in the Gaza Strip and said it was "an initial response to the assassination of the martyr Iyad Sawalha."

Sawalha, head of Islamic Jihad's military wing in the northern West Bank, was shot dead by Israeli occupation troops in a pre-dawn house-to-house hunt in Jenin after he threw grenades in an attempt to escape, occupation army sources said.

Palestinian medics confirmed Sawalha's death, which sparked new threats of revenge by resistance men s on the eve of a meeting of Palestinian factions to discuss halting resistance attacks in Israel that have marked a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence.

Sawalha, 28, was at the top of an Israeli list of wanted people for allegedly planning resistance attacks that killed more than 30 people.

Witnesses said scores of Israeli occupation soldiers had entered Jenin, some of them proceeding from house to house, breaking down walls and dynamiting doors until they found Sawalha holed up with his wife in a cave dug under one building. They said occupation soldiers called on him to surrender, but he only sent his wife out of the house and then confronted the occupation troops before he was cornered and killed.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who has condemned recent resistance bombings as terror acts damaging Palestinians' cause for statehood, branded Sawalha's killing as a "crime" and Islamic Jihad vowed Israel would suffer for it.

Such killings have typically been followed by retaliation, often with a fresh wave of resistance attacks in Israel. Slain resistance men commanders have been quickly replaced by others.

"This operation and crime will not break our strength and our resistance and our jihad (holy struggle) will continue," Sheikh Abdallah Shami, an Islamic Jihad leader in the Gaza Strip, told Reuters. "The Islamic Jihad will respond to this crime and our strike will be even more painful."

An Israeli occupation army statement said Sergeant-Major Medin Gerifat, 23, was killed while on patrol near Netzarim, an isolated and heavily guarded internationally illegal Jewish settlement in Gaza.

U.S. ENVOY TO ARRIVE ON MONDAY

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield was due in the region on Monday to push a "roadmap" for peace and a Palestinian state by 2005. The plan calls for Palestinian reforms and Israeli occupation army withdrawals from West Bank cities reoccupied in June after a series of resistance bombings.

On Friday, Palestinian officials said they would formally respond to the U.S.-sponsored plan before Satterfield arrived. But Israelis indicated their response would be delayed due to the collapse of their coalition government on October 30.

Israeli government sources expected "very little movement" on the plan until the right-wing Likud party of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon chose a leader to run in a January election.

Islamic Jihad, along with the Islamic resistance men of the Hamas group, has been behind the bulk of resistance and car bombings inside Israel since the uprising for Palestinian independence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip flared two years ago.

In October, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a commuter bus in northern Israel that killed 14 people. Israeli occupation army sources said Sawalha planned that bombing, as well as another attack in June that killed 17 people.

In Cairo, officials from Arafat's Fatah faction and Hamas were to meet to weigh how to reduce tensions between them and call off resistance attacks in Israel.

The talks were set for Saturday, but a Fatah official in the West Bank said they had been delayed until Sunday after Israel barred a Fatah official from Gaza traveling to Cairo.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have ignored calls by the Palestinian Authority to cease resistance attacks, which have drawn international censure, saying the bombings will end only when Israel stops killing Palestinian civilians and resistance men alike.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians carry the body of Ahmad Ramadan, who was killed by Israeli forces during a curfew, at his funeral in the West Bank town of Nablus November 9, 2002. Israeli forces also killed a top resistane leader of the Islamic Jihad group, raising the specter of new violence in a Palestinian uprising ahead of U.S. envoy David Satterfield's mission on Monday to the region to advocate calm. (Abed Omar Qusini/Reuter