The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten “to a pulp” when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.

Israeli tank fire killed a 10-year-old boy Friday after 10 Israelis tanks along with two armored bulldozers, backed by two assault helicopters entered the coastal region earlier on the day.

As thousands of men and women crowded into Manger Square on Thursday to attend prayers and the funerals for four local militants killed by Israeli undercover forces in a raid the day before, a general strike was observed throughout this Muslim-Christian city of 30,000 people.

In the square, youths held flags representing the mainstream Fatah, Hamas, the smaller, more extreme Islamic Jihad and the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The body of one of the victims, a local Islamic Jihad leader, Muhammad Shehada, was draped with the increasingly popular emblem of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

More than creating a temporary fusion of political and ideological divisions, though, the killings enraged Fatah advocates of negotiations with Israel, who posed questions about its commitment to peacemaking.

“The crime committed by Israel against our people aims to blow up the peace process,” said Muhammad Khalil al-Laham, a Fatah legislator who came to the square, and whose voice rose in fury as row upon row of Muslim mourners bowed down on the paving stones in silent prayer.

In an al-Jazeera English TV discussion, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and al-Quds al-Arabi editor-in-chief Abd al-Bari Atwan attempted to decipher Israel’s actions in Gaza which have, since February 27, killed more than 120 Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers. These attacks were followed by incursions and further violence, including an attack on a Jewish seminary school in Jerusalem.

Levy explained that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak wanted to demonstrate to the Israeli public that he was “doing something” about the regular launching of rockets from Gaza. Although Levy wasn’t justifying the Israeli government’s inhumane and misguided logic, he disagreed with Atwan over the use of terminology. The latter (who is also an outstanding journalist) had asserted that the killings in Gaza represented a form of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”.

Ori Nir, a spokesperson for Americans for Peace Now, said such steps are essential to a longer-term solution. “If the chief objective is to go on with the peace process, then an approach of escalation, isolation, belligerence, does not serve that goal,” he told the World. Americans should put pressure on the U.S. government to “lead, or at least not hinder,” efforts by third parties to resolve this crisis, he said.

More significantly, however, his comment offers a disturbing indication of the Israeli army’s longer-term strategy towards the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Vilnai, a former general, was interviewed by Army Radio as Israel was in the midst of unleashing a series of air and ground strikes on populated areas of Gaza that killed more than 100 Palestinians, at least half of whom were civilians and 25 of whom were children, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader, on Wednesday demanded an end to Israeli raids in Palestinian territory and the re-opening of Gaza’s border crossings, which have been sealed since June.

The terms mirrored proposals by Egyptian mediators, who have been trying to broker a truce that would also end rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters from Gaza into Israel.

Rice is to meet senior Palestinian negotiators and Israeli foreign and defence ministers at the tail-end of a trip aimed at mending peace efforts dealt a blow by Israeli strikes that have killed around 125 people in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in less than a week.

As she dined with Olmert on Tuesday — just hours after telling Israel to take more care not to kill civilians in its military operations — fresh raids on Gaza killed a baby girl and a senior militant.