I see my city collapsing, and I don't want to stand idly by and watch this collapse," Mr. Shakah told The Associated Press on Friday. He was also quoted as referring to the Israelis, saying, "I don't deny the role of the occupation in destroying the city through the frequent invasions, but we as an Authority and as citizens are doing nothing to protect the city."

For most of the last two years, Israeli forces have prevented armed, uniformed Palestinian policemen from working in cities like Nablus, saying they often proved to be terrorists.

Mr. Shakah is a senior member of Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement and has been a close ally of Mr. Arafat in the past. He said he would remain in his job until May 1 to finish several projects, including a shopping mall.

Seeking to hold off restive members of Al Fatah, Mr. Arafat promised Friday to call elections within a year for positions in the movement. Younger members have chafed at what they call corruption and mismanagement by longtime officials of the group. The Fatah leadership is dominated by the so-called Tunisians, officials who returned with Mr. Arafat from exile in Tunis in 1994. Fatah politicians who have lived longer in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip feel underrepresented.

Also Friday, the Israeli Army reported finding a tunnel almost 200 feet long that it said two Palestinian gunmen used Thursday to enter an Israeli-run industrial zone in the northern Gaza Strip, where they killed an Israeli soldier. Both Palestinians were shot to death on Thursday.

The army said soldiers had found a Palestinian police uniform inside the tunnel, which it said originated near a Palestinian police outpost in a warren of dozens of Palestinian commercial stalls. Soldiers razed the stalls.

The industrial zone remained closed on Friday.

In the southern Gaza Strip near the settlement of Kfar Darom, a Palestinian on a bicycle was approaching the settlement's greenhouses when soldiers demanded that he stop, the army said. He then blew himself up.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

In Jerusalem, Israeli police officers in stated pursuit of stone throwers stormed the square outside Al Aksa mosque, on the man-made plateau revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount.

Palestinians said the police had not been provoked. But a police spokesman said the Israeli forces had been trying to stop a Palestinian riot and protect worshipers at the Western Wall, below the plateau. He said two rocks had landed on the plaza of the Western Wall.

The police fired rubber-coated steel balls and threw stun grenades. A few light injuries were reported on both sides.

Demonstrations continued Friday against Israel's construction of a barrier against West Bank Palestinians. On Thursday, Israeli forces shot two Palestinians to death and wounded dozens more after protesters threw stones during a demonstration at the village of Biddo.

On Friday, Israeli forces fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators in the village of Qibya and just south of there in Budrus. In both cases the Israelis acted after Palestinian teenagers threw stones toward Israeli positions at the end of peaceful demonstrations. No injuries were reported.

In the shooting on Friday night, an Israeli man and woman were driving near the so-called green line that separates Israel and the West Bank when they came under fire, an army spokesman said. He said the car had been near the settlement of Eshkolot, but on the Israeli side of the boundary. Israeli forces were searching the area late Friday night.