Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was under pressure Thursday from his powerful finance minister and the UN's Middle east envoy to open talks with Syria, as two more Palestinians were shot dead in the occupied territories.
Palestinian security and medical sources said an Israeli undercover unit killed an activist from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in the northern West Bank town of Jenin.
Asaad Salah Khaliliyeh, 32, was shot in front of the Jenin municipality by plainclothed Israeli security forces travelling in a civilian vehicle, the sources said.
Israeli troops also killed a 46-year-old civilian before dawn by opening fire on Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip from watchtowers guarding the border with Egypt, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
A new report by the Israel's Shin Beth internal security services released Thursday showed that the number of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks last year more than halved, compared to 2002.
A total of 213 people were killed in 2003, including 50 soldiers and policemen, in attacks on "Israeli targets", compared with 451 in 2002, the report said.
With the internationally-drafted peace roadmap in tatters, Netanyahu urged Sharon to go back on his refusal to resume peace negotiations with Syria.
"Bearing in mind Syria's very precarious position, it's in our interest to exploit recent overtures for contacts" with Syria, the influential former premier told public radio.
He explained that US pressure on Damascus in the aftermath of the war in Iraq provided an unprecedented chance to reach agreement "without withdrawing from the Golan" Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed 14 years later.
TWO-STATE SOLUTION IN DANGER: QORIE: Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorie said on Thursday Palestinians would seek a bi-national state and demand the same rights as Israelis if Israel carried out its threat to absorb chunks of the West Bank.
"This is an apartheid solution to put the Palestinians in cantons. Who can accept this?" he said in an interview in his office in the West Bank town of Abu Dis near Jerusalem.