ARABS-ISRAEL - July 4 - Israeli settler, 3 Palestinians die.

As Israeli troops maintains a stranglehold around the Gaza Strip border town of Beit Hanoun, a fresh spasm of violence kills three Palestinians and an Israeli settler in the West Bank. The three Palestinians killed were a militant trying to infiltrate a Jewish settlement, a Palestinian shot dead after a car-chase by Jerusalem police and a youth killed in clashes with stone-throwers in Beit Hanoun. Violence has surged since Israeli PM Sharon said he planned to evacuate settlers and soldiers by the end of next year, as Palestinian militants and the army vie for supremacy in Gaza before a withdrawal. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group within Palestinian Pres Arafat's Fatah faction claimed the killing of a Jewish settler. Palestinian gunmen opened fire at an Israeli car near the city of Jenin shortly after dawn July 4, killing the 49-year-old driver and lightly wounding his wife. The Brigades said the shooting avenged Israel's killing of its West Bank commander in a raid into Nablus on June 26. In Jerusalem, Israeli paramilitary border police in civilian clothes killed a Palestinian after chasing his vehicle on suspicion that it was carrying Palestinians without entry permits. A police spokesman said the van pursued tried to "run down one of the policemen ... and then pulled over and stopped. The driver got out and fled on foot. Several hours earlier soldiers killed a Palestinian gunman the army said was trying to slip into Har Bracha settlement near Nablus to carry out an attack. Meanwhile, the head of Israel's interior security service, Shin Beth Dir Gen Avi Dichter warned of growing extremism among right-wing radicals ahead of the planned pullout of troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip. He told the weekly cabinet meeting that a recent attack on a lieutenant colonel who ordered the removal of a settlement outpost in the northern West Bank could be part of a growing pattern.