Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said security forces, acting on information about a planned suicide bombing inside Israel, raided the village of Azoun near the town of Qalqilya.

"The suicide bomber blew himself up next to an armored army vehicle and we have one slightly wounded soldier," Mofaz said in broadcast remarks.

Relatives identified the Palestinian as Sabi Abu Saoud, 17, from the West Bank city of Nablus and said he was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to the Fatah movement.

Earlier yesterday, Hamas chief spokesman Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi set out his conditions ahead of a possible dialogue with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie on reining in violence threatening a U.S.-backed "road map" to peace.

Rantissi said the radical Islamic group could discuss halting its suicide bombings inside Israel, while still targeting soldiers and Jewish settlers on occupied land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Such a condition would be unacceptable to Israel, which regards attacks on settlers and soldiers as terrorism.

"The issue that will be possible to be addressed (with the Palestinian Authority is continuing the resistance to the occupation while avoiding civilian casualties," Rantissi told Reuters at a Gaza Strip safe house. "But if the enemy (Israel) does not accept, then resistance will continue comprehensively," he said.

Hamas, sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, does not regard the 250,000 settlers living on land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war as non-combatants. International human rights groups consider the settlers to be civilians.

Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), dismissed the Hamas proposal.

"The only way forward remains unchanged. It is adopting the road map's call for the dismantling of the vast terrorist infrastructure by the Palestinian Authority and the incarceration of terrorist operatives," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.