RAMALLAH, May 16: As the West welcomed Yasser Arafat’s pledge for reforms and elections, a sceptical Israel on Thursday kept up the military pressure on the Palestinians.

Troops made raids in the West Bank and Gaza Strip overnight, killing two people and making more arrests.

Armoured vehicles moved into Ramallah for the first time since lifting the month-long siege on Arafat’s offices there on May 2, entering a civilian building and killing Mohammed Ghanam, a policeman on Israel’s wanted list.

Three members of Arafat’s elite Force 17 guards were also arrested. Witnesses reported an explosion inside the building as the Israelis withdrew.

Later Israeli special forces snatched Jordanian passport holder Ahmed Dhibi, 27, from his supermarket workplace in Ramallah, witnesses said.

In the central Gaza Strip an unarmed Palestinian civilian was killed near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, a Palestinian security source said.

An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers opened fire after a mortar round fired by Palestinians struck near the settlement without causing damage.

In the southern Gaza Strip a Palestinian man was wounded by machine-gun fire from an Israeli helicopter in Khan Yunis, a Palestinian security source said.

Israeli forces also staged a dawn raid on a village near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, imposing a curfew and rounding up at least 20 residents, witnesses said.

The army said it had arrested a Palestinian who had planted a bomb near a checkpoint north of Jerusalem. “The bomb was found and defused,” a statement said.

The latest incidents came after Arafat, under mounting Western and Israeli pressure to shake up his administration accused of corruption, inefficiency and even links to hardline groups, promised on Wednesday a major overhaul of his Palestinian Authority (PA), and new elections.

The pledges of more transparency, accountability and democracy received short shrift from Israel, which said the speech changed nothing, but were greeted with measured optimism in the West.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was “encouraged”, a sentiment echoed in Europe, where EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Arafat had told him general and municipal elections could be held as soon as late summer.

But US President George W. Bush made it clear he wanted “action” from Arafat, who had failed to take concrete measures against hardline organizers of relentless attacks on Israel in a bid to end its 35-year occupation of Palestinian land. Palestinians also called for results rather than promises.

“The Palestinian people need to see immediate effective concrete steps that would translate this statement of intent into seriousness and implementation,” said lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi.—AFP