Sneh made the comments to Channel 2 TV following a meeting between the prime minister, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and several other senior defense officials.

In addition to the removal of roadblocks, security screening of Palestinian pedestrians and vehicles will be eased at 16 main checkpoints throughout the West Bank, the report said.

Sneh said the prime minister accepted all of Peretz's proposals for easing restrictions on the Palestinians in order to help strengthen Palestinian National Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

He added that the proposals also included dramatically increasing the flow of goods into and out of the Gaza Strip through the Karni and Kerem Shalom crossings.

The decisions came two days after a meeting between Olmert and Abbas on Saturday, during which Olmert promised to dismantle a number of roadblocks in the West Bank so as to give Palestinians in the West Bank greater freedom of movement.

The medical report states that a-Dik, who was dead on arrival, was killed by two bullets that struck the middle of his body. A third bullet hit him in the hand.

These facts indicate that a-Dik was killed by illegal gunfire. The troops who entered the archeological site were on a policing mission to catch suspected stone throwers. In such situations, both Israeli law and international law permit the use of firearms only where actual and immediate danger to life is involved and other means are not available to thwart the danger. In any event, for the firing to be legal, the degree of danger inherent in firing the weapon must be proportionate to the result that the action seeks to prevent. A-Dik was standing high above the ground, holding two empty pails and posing no threat to the soldiers. Clearly, the shooting was unjustified.

On 17 December, B'Tselem wrote to the chief military prosecutor, demanding an immediate investigation into the killing and the refusal of the soldiers to provide first-aid.

Other cases of lethal shooting have taken place in similar circumstances in the past month, raising the concern that soldiers are receiving rules of engagement that contradict the law.

In December, B'Tselem learned of three additional cases in which soldiers opened fire in response to stone-throwing, or in the area of the separation barrier.

* On 3 December, Jamil al-Jabji was shot in the area north of the 'Askar refugee camp, which overlooks the Huwarra - a-Badan road. Al-Jabji threw stones at an army jeep. The soldiers in the jeep fired twice in the air as the jeep proceeded in the direction of the stone throwers. A third shot, fired from a distance of about twenty meters, hit al-Jabji in the head and killed him.

* On 7 December, Saji Husam Mahmud a-Sheikh was shot near the separation barrier, two kilometers south of Beit 'Anan, al-Quds district. Saji and his friends had attacked the fence with sticks and threw stones. Soldiers who lay in wait nearby opened fire from a distance of fifty to seventy meters. One of the shots hit Saji, breaking the bone in his leg. He underwent surgery in a Ramallah hospital and will require further surgery to repair the injury.

* On 19 December, soldiers fired at two Palestinian girls who approached the separation barrier by Far'un, a village near Tulkarm. The shooting killed Da'ah 'Abd al-Qadr, 14, and wounded her friend Saha Shalbi, 12. The Military Police are investigating the incident. On 24 December 2006, OC Central Command dismissed the platoon commander from his position and reprimanded the company commander. The soldier who fired the shot was suspended until completion of the Military Police investigation.

In all of these cases, the soldiers' lives were apparently not in danger. In its letter to the chief military prosecutor, B'Tselem demanded an investigation into whether soldiers were issued orders that could be understand in a way that contravenes the law, by giving them the dangerous impression that they are allowed to open fire at stone throwers.

The IDF dismissed a platoon commander from his post on Sunday, five days after a soldier in his unit mistakenly (??) shot dead a 14-year-old girl, Doaa Abd al-Qadr, near the West Bank city of Tul Karm.

The case had received particular attention because the girl's father, Nasser Abd al-Qadr, was in custody in Israel at the time of the shooting, and a court refused to allow him to attend his daughter's funeral or be at home in Tul Karm for the mourning period.

On Sunday, GOC Central Command Major-General Yair Naveh, who commands IDF troops in the West Bank, conducted an investigation into the incident. The probe was carried out at the site of the shooting, beside the separation fence by the Tul Karm-area village of Faroun. A parallel probe by Investigations Military Police is continuing.

The Naveh investigation ordered the dismissal of the platoon commander. It also instructed that the commander of his company, a part of the Nahshon infantry battalion, receive an official reprimand. The soldier who shot the girl has been suspended from duty until further notice.

Nasser Abd al-Qadr was freed on bail on Friday, two months after he was arrested on suspicion of being in Israel illegally and of stealing a vehicle.

On Saturday, Abd al-Qadr visited his daughter's grave and met his three other children, whom he last saw two months ago. "I wanted to see her for the last time, to kiss her for the last time," he said of his dead daughter.

Nasser Abd al-Qadr will return to the lock-up on Tuesday morning and will remain there until his trial begins. He said he has no intention of trying to flee, and that he was merely seeking work in Israel.

"I hope that Israel will look at my family. I had four children, and now I have three. I hope they will set me free," he said.

An initial investigation into the Tuesday incident showed that the girl and a 12-year-old friend were in the area of the fence when they were spotted by a force of soldiers, who reported two "suspicious figures" west of the barrier. The force' platoon commander then fired into the air. As the two girls tried to flee, a soldier who served as a marksman fired two bullets, hitting the 14-year-old Doaa.

The investigation further showed that the marksman had acted on his own, had received no permission to open fire, and had ignored the presence of the officer, who was a meter away from him. The marksman said that he believed that the figure was a terrorist, mistaking the girl's backpack for a combat vest. He admitted that he saw no weapon, and was unable to explain why he opened fire on people escaping away from the fence and toward the village. He said that he had shot at their legs, although in fact he hit the girl's forearm.

The Tel Aviv District Court last week had refused the father bail on the grounds that the law did not provide for this, after the prosecution objected to his release. On Thursday evening, his lawyer petitioned the High Court of Justice, but Justice Asher Grunis postponed the hearing until Monday, which would have been after the mourning period concluded.

On Friday morning, however, the state prosecution changed its mind about the father's release. His attorney, Rami Othman, received an offer from the prosecution to release him. The Justice Ministry explained the change of heart by saying the petitioner had originally approached the wrong court, and that the matter had been reconsidered after the petition was submitted to the High Court.

Abd al-Qadr was ordered to post NIS 5,000 bail and to bring two people to sign a guarantee of his return. The money was transferred by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Othman found one person to sign but spent many hours searching fruitlessly for a second. On Friday afternoon, MKs Ahmed Tibi (Ta'al) and Zahava Gal-On (Meretz) announced they would serve as the guarantors. Tibi then drove with Othman to the Abu Kabir lockup and signed.

The police refused to set Abd al-Qadr free at Abu Kabir, where the media was waiting, and insisted on driving him in a police van to the Taibeh roadblock, saying otherwise he would again be in Israel illegally.

"The judicial system displayed a total lack of sensitivity, and the girl was killed a second time when her father was not allowed to participate in the funeral," Tibi said.

Abd al-Qadr was set free at the roadblock but his waiting relatives on the other side were dispersed by soldiers who said they feared a crowd would gather.

Overall, drug dependency in the Palestinian territories is on the rise, according to drugs police and doctors. This, they say, is due to a sense of hopelessness among ordinary Palestinians and the lack of both effective policing to catch the dealers and of a clinical safety net to help those already addicted.

According to the Palestinian Anti-Narcotics Administration (ANA), there were more than 850 drugs seizures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2005. This year, up to October, there were 555 seizures, including 394 in the West Bank and 161 in Gaza.

The ANA said a type of hashish, known locally as Bango, was the most popular and easily-available type of drug in the Gaza Strip, while in the West Bank Palestinians can also get hold of hallucinatory drugs such as LSD.

Hassan told IRIN that his spiral into addiction began when he made acquaintance with two rich friends and began spending long nights with them smoking marijuana and taking heroin.

As he spoke, he began to cry and his blood pressure increased, turning his face red. He left the house abruptly, leaving his wife, M, also in tears.

"My husband has been lost. It is now 4pm and he will come back at midnight after having taken drugs. He wanted the drugs to help him forget our miserable living conditions but now we are living an infinitely worse nightmare," she said.

She told IRIN she had tried to divorce her husband but her children dissuaded her.

Husni Shaheen, secretary general of the Palestinian Supreme National Committee Against Drugs, said the socio-economic conditions brought about by Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which was ended last summer, had pushed Palestinians to drugs.

Shaheen added that most of the drugs in the Palestinian territories came from Lebanon and the Sinai desert in Egypt.

"Planting drugs in Palestinian Territories is very little, only for personal use and for small trading," he said.

Now local NGOs run three drug rehabilitation centres in the West Bank and one in Gaza.

But Abed al-Jawad Zyadah, head of the Hope and Life Society in Gaza, said their drug rehabilitation efforts had been greatly hampered by the international economic embargo imposed on the democratically-elected Hamas government. The West wants Hamas to recognise Israel and renounce violence before it will resume funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

"We are limited to simply advising the people that come to us - there's really nothing more we can do," he said.

The stigma of drug addiction, a source of shame among Palestinians, also prevents the addicted from seeking help until their drugs habit is well-advanced, Zyadah added.

"They want to come to us in a secret way without anyone knowing. Often they wait until they are really in big trouble. Such reticence makes the work of NGO more complex," he said.

Nevertheless, Zyadah said NGOs like Hope and Life had helped some 400 drug addicts in the West Bank.

Dr Adel Aouda, a psychologist in Gaza City, said he had treated some drug addicts because there was no dedicated drugs rehabilitation centre in the Gaza Strip run by the PA Ministry of Health.

"Drugs are spreading because we don't have a plan to deter its use or stop the smuggling," he said.

Concerned citizens reported that the continuation of the situation, particularly with the Eid Al Adha approaching and Christmas upon the region, is leading to a serious dilemma in how to reach relatives for any sort of festivities. The economic situation is also being negatively impacted, more so than before, as reported by residents.

Israeli forces continued invasions throughout Christmas Eve and into Christmas day, arresting several Palestinians, including from Bethlehem.

A U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan known as the "road map" calls for a halt to settlement construction in the West Bank, land Palestinians want for a state.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz has decided to allow the construction of 30 homes in Maskiot, a former army base that currently houses a military academy for high school students, the government official said.

"The decision was taken by then-Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz in the previous government and it wasn't possible to prevent this," the official said after Israel Radio reported Peretz, leader of the centre-left Labor Party, had given the final nod.

A regional council official in the Jordan Valley said building work in Maskiot would begin in two weeks, Israel Radio said.

The families planning to move to Maskiot lived in two of the 21 settlements Israel dismantled in the Gaza Strip in 2005 under a "disengagement plan" promoted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Some 8,500 settlers were pulled out of the Gaza Strip, along with Israeli troops, after 38 years of occupation.

Emily Amrusy, a spokeswoman for the Jewish settlers' umbrella YESHA Council, said 42 of the 1,700 families evacuated from the Gaza Strip have been living in temporary housing in two settlements in the West Bank.

She said the rest had opted to reside in Israel.

"The explanation is that most of the families wanted to live in southern Israel to be close to working places and relatives," Amrusy said.

She said the government had promised to build "a neighborhood" for Gaza evacuees in Maskiot and they planned to move into caravans at the site to await the construction of permanent housing.

Some 260,000 settlers live in the West Bank, home to 2.5 million Palestinians. The World Court has branded Israeli settlements on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war as illegal. Israel disputes this.

Israeli forces also invaded the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia, searched scores of residents' homes down town, then abducted Rafiq Nufal, 20, and took him to unknown destination.

Also in north of the West Bank, Israeli soldiers invaded the city of Jenin and its Refugee camp, searched and ransacked a number of homes and shops and abducted Mahmoud Al Sa'di, leader in the Islamic Jihad Movement, from Jenin refugee camp and Iyad Al Sayed, from the city of Jenin, both were moved to detention camps, sources in the city reported.