(19 Dec 2000) Natural Sound

Palestinians poured onto the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday in a day of mass protests and strike action against the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington D-C later on Tuesday.

In Gaza Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat acted as a pallbearer at the funeral of Brigadier Abdel Moutti Sabawi, the deputy commander of the Palestinian police in the Gaza Strip.

A 49-year-old father of five, who was also a senior member of Arafat's Fatah faction, was killed while tending to an un-detonated Israeli shell on Monday.

In the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron and in Arab East Jerusalem, all shops were closed in response to the Palestinian call for a half day general strike in protest to the peace talks.

And in Ramallah, protestors with flags and banners marched through the city centre, protesting alongside the funeral of a teenage boy killed by Jewish settlers on the outskirts of the city on Sunday.

Israeli police said on Monday they were questioning two Jewish settlers from Neve Tzuf near Ramallah who they had detained in connection with the killing of 18-year-old Mohammed Hamed Shalash.

His body had been dumped on a road after he had been shot in the head.

The Palestinian cabinet minister and prominent peace negotiator, Nabil Shaath, warned on Monday of more violence to come if this current round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington once again proved fruitless.

The 12-week-old Palestinian uprising has claimed 331 lives, nearly all of them Palestinians.

In Washington, Palestinian-Israeli consultations were beginning.

Israeli and Palestinian delegations are meeting separately with U-S mediators, and possibly holding three-way talks later.

Israeli media reports suggest that the two sides have already reached some understandings on divisive issues including the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and the fate of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees.

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