By Alistair Lyon
Jerusalem - Israeli-Palestinian violence flared on Sunday as Prime Minister Ehud Barak headed to the United States on a trip nearly scuppered by a hijack crisis.
Leaders of the world's 1,2 billion Muslims began a summit in Qatar calling for tough action against Israel for "war crimes" against Palestinians and Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir advocated a Jihad (holy struggle) to liberate Arab lands.
In new clashes, Israeli troops fought Palestinian gunmen and protesters, killing one teenager and wounding eight people. A Jewish settler shot a teenaged Palestinian stone-thrower in the legs. Two roadside bombs exploded in Gaza, but no one was hurt.
At least 206 people, mostly Palestinians, have died in more than six weeks of violence that has shattered a peace process shepherded for seven years by US President Bill Clinton.
As Barak flew to Washington, Leah Rabin, 72, wife of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who signed the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Clinton's presence, died of heart failure in hospital after a battle with lung cancer.
Barak was due to meet Clinton later on Sunday after twice changing his flight plans in the air in response to the hijack of a Russian airliner that landed in Israel.
At a refuelling stop in England, he decided to put off his trip and go home, but turned his Air Force One plane around again over the Mediterranean as the drama involving an apparently deranged Chechen hijacker ended peacefully.
The lone hijacker had seized the Dagestan Airlines Tupolev 154 with 58 passengers and crew on board on a flight from Moscow to Makhachkala in the Russian region of Dagestan.
The plane landed at Uvda military base in southern Israel in the early hours. Security forces later disarmed the hijacker and all the passengers and crew members left the plane safely.
Iaraeli army chief Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz said the man was Chechen and a Russian embassy official said he lived in nearby Dagestan. Chechen rebels are fighting for independence from Russia.
Mofaz said the hijacker's demands were domestic in nature and had nothing to do with a six-week-old Palestinian uprising against Israel, as Israeli authorities had earlier believed.
Yom-Tov Samia, head of the army's southern command, who named the hijacker as Amerkhanov Ahmed Avnerkhan, in his late 20s, said he seemed "deranged", and had produced a recording and two letters with "strange" contents.
Barak has said his talks with Clinton will focus on halting the bloodshed and are unlikely to lead to renewed peace talks.
Arafat met Clinton on Wednesday and tried to win him over to the idea of a UN force to protect Palestinian civilians.
Clinton has said the proposal for UN peacekeepers, which Arafat also pitched to a closed session of the UN Security Council, cannot get off the ground because Israel opposes it.
Israel, ever hostile to Palestinian attempts to introduce an international element in the conflict, says direct talks with the Palestinians are the only way to calm the unrest.
"We got a very general description of the (Clinton-Arafat) meeting from the Americans and we were told ... that the president attaches huge importance to discussing it face to face with the prime minister," Barak's security adviser Danny Yatom told reporters on the prime minister's plane.
Israeli troops shot dead an unidentified Palestinian teenager in clashes with protesters near the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, hospital officials said.
In the West Bank, soldiers and Palestinian gunmen traded fire over a valley between the Palestinian-ruled town of Beit Jala and the Jewish settlement of Gilo, near Jerusalem.
Hospital sources said Israeli gunfire on Beit Jala had wounded seven Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy. They had been leaving church after a Sunday service, residents said.
Witnesses at Gilo said Israeli apartment buildings had come under fire from Beit Jala, forcing residents, including toddlers at a kindergarten, to lie on the floor for cover. "It's like a war zone here," one witness told Israel Radio.
A Jewish settler shot a 16-year-old Palestinian in the legs in Tuku'u village near Bethlehem, Palestinian hospital sources said. Witnesses said he had been stoning a passing Israeli car.
A roadside bomb exploded in Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip as two Israeli cars passed by but no one was hurt, the army said. Israel radio said a second bomb went off near the Nahal Oz crossing as an Israeli convoy passed, causing no casualties.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, thousands of protesters threw stones and petrol bombs at Israeli soldiers who responded with teargas and rubber bullets, witnesses said.
In Hebron, Palestinian gunmen fired at Israeli soldiers over the heads of stone-throwing demonstrators. The troops shot back, wounding a Palestinian in the hand, witnesses said.
Mofaz blamed the Palestinians for failing to keep ceasefire commitments in the past six weeks. "I hope the ceasefire will be upheld soon and if not I assume that different decisions will be made," he told Israel radio, without saying what these would be.
Palestinians accuse Israel of using excessive force to deal with unrest over its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Twelve Palestinians, one Israeli Arab and two Israeli soldiers were killed on Friday and Saturday as violence intensified after an Israeli helicopter missile strike killed a local Palestinian gunman near Bethlehem on Thursday. - Reuters