Israelis abroad put on alert for army call-up

The Middle East is bracing itself for further bloodshed after a West Bank office of Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian party headed by Yasser Arafat, was levelled in an explosion.

About 5,000 Palestinians paraded yesterday through the streets of Hebron, in the West Bank, during the funeral of Rajai Abu Rajab, an activist from Fatah's military wing who was killed in the blast on Friday night.

Only a day earlier a Jewish settler guerrilla group, called the "Committee for Road Safety", killed three Arabs – including a three-month-old boy – by pumping bullets into their car outside a nearby village.

Another ominous sign is the Israeli army's announcement yesterday that it has opened bureaux in nine cities worldwide, in the event that Israelis living or travelling abroad need to be called up for military service.

An army spokeswoman said offices in Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Bombay, Bangkok, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and New York had been established to bring the reservists back home. "We have to be prepared for every eventuality," she said.

Mourners at yesterday's Hebron funeral were adamant that the Fatah official had been assassinated by an Israeli death squad, which has killed more than 40 Palestinians in the past 10 months, ignoring condemnation from both the United States and Europe.

Israeli officials have denied this and maintain that the Fatah man died in a "work accident" – eg, he was blown up while making a bomb.

They declined to comment on another undercover operation, also on Friday night. According to Palestinian security officials, plainclothes Israeli agents abducted Ahmed Taha, 35, an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical Palestinian faction.

As the situation deteriorates, Yasser Arafat has called on the G8 nations to intervene. But the appeal has little hope of success. The group's pre-summit call this week for the deployment of international ceasefire monitors was rendered meaningless by the inclusion of a condition that they must be acceptable to both sides. Israel has always opposed the idea.

With neither side even close to accepting the other's demands, the fanatics prevail. International diplomacy has yet found no solution.