Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credited the Palestinians for helping to find the body of a missing Israeli soldier, and said the Hamas cell that killed him was responsible for at least 13 other deaths, including a March 21 suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv cafe that killed three women.
Arafat promised to help stop such bombings this week in a meeting with the head of Israel's Shin Bet security agency, Israeli and Palestinian officials said Thursday.
The meeting was the first high-level contact between Israel and the Palestinians since Israel broke ground three weeks ago for a new Jewish neighborhood in the part of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians. It raised hopes that the daily - and deadly - clashes in the West Bank could end.
But in the town of Hebron yesterday, hundreds of Palestinians threw stones and firebombs at Israeli troops who responded with rubber bullets, injuring seven people.
The Mir, the world's only manned space station, has had a run of bad luck: a fire in February, the failure of the main oxygen-generating system last month and leaking coolant loops that overheated the main living module to an uncomfortable 86 degrees last week.