Palestinians stage general strike

Police wrestle with a protester outside Jerusalem's Orient House

Palestinians have staged a general strike in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest against Israel's seizure of Orient House, their unofficial headquarters in mainly Arab East Jerusalem.

There's nothing that a [US] administration can do if there's no will for peace

President Bush

Israeli troops occupied the building following Thursday's bombing by the Islamic militant group Hamas at a popular restaurant in west Jerusalem, which killed 15 people.

Most Palestinian shops and businesses were closed, while Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police again scuffled outside Orient House itself.

Shops shuttered in protest

Israel remains on a high state of alert following last week's bloody suicide bombing in Jerusalem, and another attack on Sunday which killed the bomber and injured 15 people.

Palestinian refugees in south Lebanon and Damascus also shut up shop to protest at the seizure of the highly symbolic headquarters, in the first general strike since the uprising, or intifada, began last September.

At a refugee camp near the Lebanese city of Sidon, about 2,000 Palestinians chanted anti-Israel slogans and burned an effigy of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

Blunder?

Israeli troops occupied Orient House on Friday, as well as occupying other offices in the suburb of Abu Dis and launching air strikes on Palestinian police headquarters in Ramallah.

Doves and hawks do not see eye-to-eye over the next step

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded an immediate ceasefire and called for an end to the occupation of Orient House.

His appeal was echoed by US President George Bush, who said his administration was striving "to convince the parties". But he added that "the people in the area must make the conscious decision to stop terrorism".

But Israel has declared that Orient House will never be handed back.

Doves in the Israeli cabinet, led by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, believe that the hawks led by Mr Sharon may have committed a blunder by seizing the building.

[Suicide bombings] force Ariel Sharon to accept Foreign Minister Shimon Peres negotiating with the Palestinians

Hamas political leader

A BBC correspondent in Israel says the doves fear it may bring the Palestinian uprising into the heart of Jerusalem and lead to television pictures of Israeli police spilling Palestinian blood on the streets of the city.

Tension remained high in the West Bank, where more than 1,000 mourners attended the funeral of a seven-year-old Palestinian girl shot dead during gun battles between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in Hebron on Sunday.

Talks

Amid the protests, peace efforts were continuing, with Mr Peres being authorised to make contact with Palestinian representatives, but only to discuss a ceasefire and not for political negotiations.

Protests erupted at Orient House again on Sunday

Senior political sources in the Israeli Government confirmed the latest effort to end 10 months of violence, but stressed that it did not breach Mr Sharon's oft-repeated policy of not negotiating "under fire".

The BBC's Paul Wood says many Palestinians view Israeli attempts to re-open talks without a political content as an effort to get them to call off their uprising unconditionally.

Israel said it held Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat personally responsible for Sunday's attack in a Russian cafe near the northern town of Haifa.

Meanwhile the political chief of Hamas said that suicide bombs were the only way to bargain with Israel.

Such attacks "force Ariel Sharon to accept Foreign Minister Shimon Peres negotiating with the Palestinians," said Khaled Meshaal.