Yehezkel Mualem, 49, was shot in an ambush at the Lapid Junction at the western entrance to Kiryat Arba late Thursday night and died of his wounds the following day in Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Kerem. Mualem, a Kiryat Arba council member with four children, was buried Friday at Jerusalem's Har HaMenuchot cemetery.

Earlier on Thursday, David Cohen, 31, a resident of the

Jews, Palestinians agree about one thing: Hebron is a ticking time bomb.

Betar-Illit settlement, was wounded in a drive-by shooting attack. Cohen died of his injuries on Friday and was buried Saturday night.

In response to the Palestinian shooting attacks, Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and heavy machine guns were called into action in Hebron on Thursday night and Friday. Israeli troops temporarily occupied parts of the Palestinian-controlled sections of the city and destroyed a number of Force 17 positions. A Force 17 armory was reported destroyed before the Israeli forces withdrew.

Twenty-three Palestinians were reported wounded when Israeli gunfire was directed at Palestinian security positions in the city and surrounding neighborhoods. Palestinian sources said a seven-year-old girl was hit by gunfire and moderately wounded near her home in the Abu Sneneh neighborhood.

Palestinian sources reported that the Israeli actions in Hebron were the fiercest and most destructive in the city since 1967 and included attacks on neighborhoods that had not previously been involved in the Intifada. Several generators were damaged, leaving many sections of Hebron without electricity.

Palestinians reported that Jewish settlers damaged Palestinian property on Friday, setting fire to a number of homes and businesses. There were unconfirmed reports that settlers broke windows of UNRWA offices in the city and smashed the windshields of Palestinian-owned cars.

Palestinian cabinet secretary Ahmad Abed al-Rahman said on Saturday that the settlers in Hebron were a "ticking time bomb that escalates the situation."

On the brink of an explosion
Hebron Jewish community spokesman Noam Arnon told ynet this morning that the Jewish settlers demand "real action against the terrorists." The many incidents of violence in Hebron over the weekend show that patience is running thin on all sides. The Israel Security Agency (former known as Shin Bet) has reportedly warned that settlers in the Hebron region were "on the brink of an explosion."

Several dozen young Jewish settlers and yeshiva students temporarily took over a building in the Casbah market section of Hebron Sunday morning in protest of the recent deterioration of the security situation in the city. The abandoned building, reportedly owned by Jews, was in a closed military area, off-limits to civilians.

Elimelech Karzen, spokesman for the group, said they took over the structure to show that despite terror attacks and attempts to remove them from the area, the will of the settlers remains unbroken.

After IDF and Israeli police forces arrived on the scene, the group left the building peacefully to prevent a confrontation or forced evacuation.

In commentary published today in Ha'aretz, Amos Harel suggests that the escalation of Palestinian violence in Hebron recently can be attributed to infighting between the Tanzim paramilitary force and the city's Fatah leadership. On the Israeli side, IDF commanders have kept in close contact with the settler leadership. Settler violence has become "an anticipated, almost accepted, aftermath of any terror attack against them, " Harel wrote.

Ha'aretz quoted a source on the IDF General Staff who said, "The Hebron pressure cooker has known ups and downs. The question is whether this time we've gone past the point where things could slip out of hand."

© 2001 Koret Communications Ltd. All rights reserved. Terms of Use.