Israel shuts down two universities in West Bank region

JERUSALEM -- Israel closed two Palestinian colleges on Wednesday and pumped cement into three east Jerusalem houses to destroy apartments belonging to Palestinians convicted in a series of deadly bombings.

Also Wednesday, three Palestinians were killed in scattered clashes with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank -- two teenagers and a man said by relatives to be mentally ill, according to Palestinians and the Israeli army.

The United States criticized Israel's closure of the Islamic University and the Polytechnic Institute, both in the West Bank town of Hebron.

Israel was responding to a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed 23 people in Tel Aviv earlier this month.

But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the action was not in the interest of either side.

Palestinian Education Minister Naim Abu'l Humus accused the Israelis of attempting to "sabotage the education process, which already has been badly affected through sieges, closures and curfews."

Several thousand students attend the two colleges. The army said some are using the facilities to plan and launch attacks.

Houses filled with cement

In mostly Arab east Jerusalem, Israeli police, accompanied by cement trucks and Asian workers, filled three houses with barrel after barrel of wet cement. They also punched holes in opposite sides of the houses and placed long steel beams through the houses at chest level to further discourage anyone from returning.

Unlike dozens of other Palestinian homes, these were not torn down because each contained other apartments police said they did not want to damage.

But another home in east Jerusalem was bulldozed after Israeli forces blew up part of it.

Israel said the homes belong to four Hamas militants convicted of organizing bombings that killed 35 people last year, including five Americans who died in a July attack at Hebrew University. All are serving life sentences except one, who received a 60-year prison term.

Wednesday was the first time in the current Palestinian uprising that Israel has torn down homes of militants in east Jerusalem. Previous demolitions during the last 28 months of violence took place in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Israel says it destroys the homes to deter Palestinian attacks but Palestinians condemn the tactic as collective punishment.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Palestinian factions were trying to reach a consensus on a possible ceasefire but Israel was making it difficult.

The Israelis "are continuing their military escalation against our people, lands, institutions, women and children everywhere," he said after Wednesday's violence in the West Bank.

Israeli soldiers shot at a Palestinian who detonated several bombs as they were trying to arrest suspected militants in a refugee camp in Tulkarem, the army said. Mouhi Aldin Hamza, 16, was killed, Palestinian hospital officials said.

A second 16-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops in stone-throwing clashes that erupted later in Tulkarem, Palestinian witnesses and officials said. The army said soldiers shot a Palestinian hurling firebombs at troops, but had no information on his fate.

In Kabatiya, a village in the northern West Bank, Israeli troops fatally shot a Palestinian man who approached them, despite their warnings to stop, during an operation to arrest two suspected militants holed up in a building, the army said. No weapons were found on the man, said by relatives to be mentally ill. They identified him as Ribhi Zakarna, 42.

The two Palestinian gunmen inside the house eventually surrendered, witnesses said. They were among more than 20 suspected militants arrested in West Bank sweeps Wednesday, the army said.