65 residents were killed by the Israeli bullets and shells in the Gaza Strip, while in the West Bank, seven residents were killed in Jenin, six in Nablus, two in Bethlehem, two in Tulkarem, one in Qalqilia, one in Tammoun and one in Tubas.

Number of Palestinians killed in July and August arrived to 285 residents.

At least 270 residents, including 11 women, were arrested in August. The eleven women were identified as Myassar Abu Ezneid, 40, Rifqa Al Ja'bary, 43, Rania Abu Khdeir, 25, all from Hebron, Roweida Oweijan, 30, from Nablus, Haya Ghanim, 20, Montaha Boshnaq, 21, both from Tulkarem, Zakiyya Ghawanma, 35, Hiba Al Ammoury, 22, Falasteen Sabah, 22, all from Al Jalazoun refugee camp in Ramallah, and two unidentified women who were arrested in Al Ezariyya town, near Jerusalem.

Troops also arrested several legislators, ministers, members of city councils and one university lecturers.

The arrested ministers are Minister of Education and Vice Prime Minister, Nasser Ed Deen Al Shaer, Dr. Aziz Dweik, head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, member of the Legislative Council, Fadel Hamdan and Mahmoud Musleh, head of Beit Ummar Municipality Farhan Alqam, member of Al Biereh city council, Ziad Dayya, head of Shaqba municipality near Ramallah, Hussein Nakhla, member of Municipality council, Sameh Mahmoud Affana, Dr, Rafiq Abu Dheir, a lecturer at Al Najah University in Nablus.

Hebron district witnessed the largest arrest campaign, at least 75 residents were arrested. In Nablus at least 45 were arrested, 29 in Qalqilia, 24 in Bethlehem, 24 in Tulkarem, 22 in Jenin, 17 in Ramallah, 6 in Jericho, 3 in Jerusalem, two in Tubas, two in Salfit, one on Tammoun and twenty residents were arrested in the Gaza Strip.

Attacks against journalists continued and extended in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, army also attacked several journalist agencies and offices.

In August 1, soldiers broke into Mass Press center and confiscated several computers, files and 550 New Israeli Shekels.

August 3, soldiers detained Romel Al Sweity, a reported with Al Hayat Al Jadeeda newspaper, after stopping him at a military checkpoint near Huwwara town, south of Nablus.

August 18, Rami Abdo, a camera man working with the Associated Press was injured by a rubber coated bullet while reporting from Bilin village, near Ramallah, during a protest against the Wall.

August 24, soldiers shot and injured Dr. Farid Abu Dheir, a lecturer at the Journalism Department at Al Najah University in Nablus as he was crossing through a checkpoint near Hebron.

August 27, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at an armored press vehicle carrying a clear sign for Reuters, the attack took place near Al Mintar Crossing, east of Gaza City. Cameraman Fadel Shana'a was moderately injured, and a local cameraman, Sabbah Hmeida, was seriously injured.

Targeting medical teams and medical facilities also continued in August causing damage and several injuries.

August 13, Israeli soldiers broke into Al Ahli Hospital in Hebron after surrounded the building. Soldiers also broke into Al Mizan Hospital and the Hebron Governmental Hospital in Hebron.

August 20, soldiers broke into a medical center that belongs to the Islamic Charitable Society, violently searched it causing excessive damage.

August 27, soldiers stationed at a checkpoint near Aseera Al Shimaliyya village, in the northern part of the West Bank, attacked Dr. Jihad Bani Odeh, a veterinarian, and Dr. Salah Bisharat, a dentist, and struck them with rifle-buts.

August 31, a medic identifed as Majid Al Nada, 40, was injured by Israeli military fire as he was trying to transfer a wounded resident to a hospital in Nablus. Al Nada works with the Red Crescent Society.

The Israeli violations also included a strict siege over the occupied territories, installing dozens of checkpoints and barring the residents from crossing.

Invasions, shelling of civilian areas and destruction of civilian properties continues as the soldiers shelled dozens of houses in the Gaza Strip and broke into hundreds of houses in the West Bank.

More than 850 Lebanese were killed during the conflict, most of them civilians. The human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian targets.

Israel has said it acted legally and accused Hezbollah of hiding among civilians in Lebanon and deliberately targeting Israeli civilians in rocket attacks. The fighting left 159 Israelis dead, including 39 civilians hit by Hezbollah rockets in Israel's northern cities. The Amnesty report also criticized Hezbollah's attacks on civilians.

The Foreign Ministry official said the legal-defense team, which includes representatives from the Justice and Defense ministries, is maintained by the government to help officials facing the possibility of war crimes charges abroad. It was first assembled to deal with charges related to Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

He would not comment on a report in the Haaretz daily that the ministry has urged top officials against making inflammatory statements that might be used against them in legal proceedings.

Israeli Tourism Minister Yitzhak Herzog said he isn't concerned about prosecution of Israeli leaders, but he criticized some officials for excessively belligerent statements during the war that could expose them to legal action abroad.

"Today we have to understand that wars, political situations and military situations include many components, and that one of the components that have to be weighed is international law," Herzog told Army Radio.

Israeli fears of prosecution abroad are based on experience. A retired general arriving in London last year who had commanded Israeli forces in Gaza was tipped off by an Israeli diplomat that he was about to be arrested by British authorities over a 2002 air strike that killed a Hamas leader and 14 others, nine of them children. Doron Almog remained on the plane and returned to Israel.

In 2001, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced a lawsuit in Belgium over his alleged role in a 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. Several former Israeli army chiefs of staff also have been targeted. None of the cases have succeeded.

Daniel Machover, a British attorney involved in attempts to prosecute Israeli officers including Almog, said he knew of "at least two" teams compiling evidence in Lebanon for use in future legal cases. He said it was "too early" to disclose more details.

"We've located web sites used by high-tech people, and will put Shin Bet banners in them," he added.

The want ads will be published over a few weeks. The service will also approach potential candidates with a letter signed by Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin.

The Shin Bet will market the jobs as "technology with real vocation, not just another start-up waiting for a chance," says a source close to the campaign.

The service was looking for people "who have been out there and made it," and who are now looking for an opportunity to develop technology "that could save lives, catch the suicide bomber on his way to Tel Aviv," he says.

"People think Israel's warfare with terror organizations takes place mainly in operative field activity. But a lot of the secret people who belong to the Shin Bet are software engineers, programmers, and IT and communications people. The technological interface is an important part of our operative activity and many of the warnings and preventive activity we hear of in the media would not have succeeded without the Shin Bet's advanced information systems," he says.

The Wall will stretch from southern Bethlehem to the west side in the town of Al Khader and then further south to northern Hebron's Beit Umar Village. The Palestinian land of Hebron is currently used for grazing and agriculture.

This latest confiscation notice comes in addition to the Israeli move to tighten the blockade around Bethlehem. The northern side of town was confiscated and recently taken into the Israeli controlled Jerusalem Municipality. The "new north" is now closed by several segments of the Wall. The northeast is hemmed in by the encroaching settlement on Abu Ghaneim Mountain, Har Homa. The Efrat Settlement blocks Bethlehem from the south and leads into the military compound of Gush Etzion and the Betar Illit Settlement to the southwest. Today the Israeli government issued tenders to expand two settlements with 700 additional units, over 300 of them in Betar Illit. To the northwest is Gilo Settlement built on what was Beit Jala land, a small city up the hill in western Bethlehem.

Khalid Al Azzeh issued a statement to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations. He requested, on behalf of the land defense committee, that the UN take responsible action by applying the numerous existing resolutions against such confiscation. Al Azzeh also wrote that if international law and legitimacy were honored, the economic blockade would end, as would land confiscation, agricultural destruction and population displacement.

The statement also demanded that the Palestinian Authority and the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization step up. It read that the International Court of Justice in the Hague ruling against the Israeli Wall inside the West Bank must be presented to the UN Security Council for adoption. The final word from the Committee to Defend against Land Confiscation is calling for international law to be applied in order to stop Israeli steps to Judaize Palestinian land.

The Palestinian government has been in a financial crisis since Hamas took over in March after winning parliamentary elections. Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel, has refused international pressure to renounce violence and recognize the Jewish state. In response, Western donors cut off aid.

Fatah , which controls many of the unions and dominates the powerful security forces, has openly supported the strikes, drawing accusations from Hamas that the stoppage is politically motivated.

In the West Bank , the work stoppage, launched last weekend by teachers and civil servants, escalated into a full-scale general strike as shop owners closed their stores. In one town, gunmen from the opposition Fatah Party shot weapons in the air after some businesses tried to open.

"We aren't against the government, even if we disagree with it. But for seven months we've suffered without salaries," said Nidal Khader, a security officer who helped organize the protest.

Several men threw rocks at the Palestinian parliament building, smashing windows and doors. The men tried to enter the parliament at one stage, but were held back by policemen guarding the building.

Hours earlier, four Hamas militants were killed in Israeli air strikes on vehicles in Rafah town. At least 20 bystanders were hurt in those attacks.

Israeli forces have been carrying out raids and air strikes on Gaza after the capture of an Israeli soldier in June.

Hundreds of Palestinians have since been killed by Israeli action.

'Several explosions'

The latest attack, near the southern city of Khan Younis, targeted the house of a Hamas militant, killing him and two others.

Israel said the raid targeted armed men who were planning to approach the border fence.

Two Hamas militants were killed in the earlier strike on a car in Rafah.

Hours before that, an Israeli drone attacked a vehicle being used by two activists from Hamas' military wing. Both men were killed.

Dozens of bystanders were also hurt, Palestinian doctors said.

Many of the injured are said to have been hit by a second blast, having rushed to the vehicle to help its passengers after the initial explosion.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the missiles had targeted militants planning an attack on Israel.

"After the aerial attack, there were a number of explosions, proving that the vehicle was carrying explosives," the spokeswoman said.

The Rafah border crossing has been closed for all but 7 days since an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian militants on a cross-border raid on June 25.

Israel responded to the raid by launching a major ground and air offensive that has killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians.

Western diplomats say Israel has prevented Rafah from opening by keeping European monitors from getting to the terminal, citing security concerns.

The European official said pulling the monitors out of Rafah was "one of the options" being looked at for when the current agreement for the crossing expires in November.

Other options include relocating the monitors, who have been based in southern Israel, to Egypt.

The European monitors oversee Rafah under an agreement which took effect on Nov. 24, 2005 and was aimed at opening up Gaza after Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from the strip last year after 38 years of occupation.

The European official said the one-year agreement could be extended, changed or cancelled.

Palestinians technically control the crossing but its operations can be blocked by Israel.

A U.S. plan calls for deploying international monitors at Gaza's main Karni commercial crossing with Israel to ensure that gateway remains open. Israel has shut the crossing frequently this year because of what it says are threats from Palestinian militants.

The U.S. proposal, submitted to donors early this month, includes the deployment of 90 foreign monitors and expanding the Karni crossing at a cost of some $19 million.

They are among more than 30 Hamas political leaders detained in recent weeks after the capture by militants near Gaza of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, who is still being held. The men, in brown prison shirts and trousers, each held a finger aloft as an act of defiance as they sat together in the dock, surrounded by armed troops. Abdul Aziz Duaik, speaker of parliament, one of the most recent detained, was in pyjamas and chains.

Jawad Boulous, a lawyer representing Mr Duaik and some others, challenged the Israeli court's jurisdiction. "The defence does not recognise the legality of this court because it is a political trial," he said outside the hearing. "We're talking about leaders abducted by Israel. We demand the release of all of them."

Hamas, Islamicists responsible in the past for suicide bombings in Israel, won a surprise victory in elections in January on the promise of an end to corruption and the hope of a stronger Palestinian authority. But since Hamas is proscribed as a terror organisation in Israel and most western countries, western donors held back their usual $30m (£16m) monthly support and Israel stopped transferring its usual $60m in monthly customs receipts.

The result has been to put Hamas under financial pressure at a time when its leaders have been detained, including some like Mr Duaik who are regarded as more moderate. Since March the 160,000 employees of the Palestinian Authority have not been paid and in the past week strikes have begun amid a sharp economic decline.

In Gaza, where Hamas is strong, there has been a descent into lawlessness and militancy severe enough to prompt one well-known Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad, to write in a Palestinian paper this week asking militants to stop firing rockets into Israel and to end the chaos. "We have lost our sense of direction," he wrote.

A senior GOP source said the money was part of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove's strategy to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate in November. The source said Mr. Rove, together with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, directed leading pro-Bush contributors to donate millions of dollars to Mr. Lieberman's campaign for re-election in Connecticut in an attempt that he would be a "Republican-leaning" senator.

"Joe [Lieberman] took the money but said he would not play ball," the source said. "That doesn't mean that this was a wasted investment."

Mr. Rove has been responsible for the White House's effort to ensure a GOP majority in Congress for the last two years of Bush's presidency. Internal party polls show the GOP could lose between 30 and 40 seats in the House as well as its majority in the Senate. A Democratic majority in the Senate would require the GOP to lose at least six seats.

The source said that under Mr. Rove's direction, the GOP has abandoned its Senate candidate in Connecticut, Alan Schlesinger, who has dropped to about five percent in the polls. Mr. Schlesinger has failed to win the support of any national Republican and has virtually no contact with the White House.

In contrast, Mr. Lieberman, who has called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was deemed a major component of the GOP strategy in November. Mr. Lieberman is expected to win the general election after losing the Democratic primary to anti-war challenger Ned Lamont. However, the race with Mr. Lamont has been tightening considerably.

"The more he [Lieberman] spits, the more that he [Bush] kisses," Mr. Schlesinger said. "I don't understand that. I guess a kiss is not just a kiss."

In July, the Republican National Committee provided the Republican Party in Connecticut with $120,900, the eighth largest contribution that month. The RNC has raised $70 million, with a special fund designated to help keep its congressional majority.

"I'm staying out of Connecticut because, you know, that's what the party suggested, the Republican Party of Connecticut," President Bush said on Aug. 21. "And, plus, there's a better place to spend our money, time and resources."

Mr. Lieberman has raised most of his money from outside Connecticut. The veteran senator has turned his re-election campaign into a test of patriotism and support for the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

The source said that under Mr. Rove's plan, Mr. Lieberman would vote with the GOP on national security issues and help provide the party with a 50-50 split on major legislation. The deciding vote would then be cast by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Republican Party leaders plan to make national security the leading issue on the agenda in Congress when members return from the August recess. GOP leaders intend to vote on issues that relate to counterterrorism, border and port security, and national security.

"Republican leaders will be more than happy if their Democratic colleagues erect procedural hurdles against these efforts to fight terrorist organizations," Mike Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in an analysis. "The best floor strategy would be to give all of these anti-terrorism initiatives a unique identity by bundling them together into one robust legislative package. Call it Patriot Act II. There's no better way to give the voters a single opportunity to assess the anti-terrorist agenda and judge their elected officials accordingly."

"You have always demonstrated solidarity and friendship with Israel," declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, welcoming the American Jewish Committee Solidarity Mission to Israel.

Olmert, who broke away from budget meetings in order to speak to the large AJC delegation at his office, reviewed the developments that led to Israel's military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and explained why he is convinced, notwithstanding the post-war debate in Israel, that Hezbollah indeed was weakened, and over the long-term Israel's security situation will improve as a result of the war.

"The situation in Lebanon is changed forever," said Olmert. "For the first time in 35 years the Lebanese army is down south, the Hezbollah is hiding."

The second main result of the war, he continued, is "the world today is more awakened to the dangers coming from Iran."

For more than ten years Hezbollah was allowed by the international community to acquire significant amounts of rockets, and other sophisticated advanced weaponry, from Syria and Iran, "preparing to strike at a time to be determined by Iran," said the prime minister, adding his hope that the international community will act to stop the Iranian threat.

Olmert said that after Hezbollah crossed the northern border, killed several Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two, as well as fired rockets, "I felt it was time for Israel to face it, to change the equation so that we won't have to face it again."

The prime minister was emphatic that Israel's deterrence capability remains strong. "When you attack one Israeli, you attack the entire country," is the key lesson for the region, said the prime minister.

The meeting yesterday at the prime minister's office was the opening session of the AJC mission, which brought to Israel more than 120 AJC members across the U.S., as well as several U.S. Christian leaders, a former deputy prime minister of Sweden, and Jewish students from Europe and Latin America. This is the second AJC Solidarity Mission to Israel since the war broke out in mid-July.