The 30-year-old guard was moderately wounded and evacuated to a nearby hospital where he is in stable condition.

During the attack, Dichter and his foreign guests, members of the Canada-Israel Committee, were forced to lie flat on the ground to avoid being hit themselves.

Dichter, a resident of the nearby coastal city of Ashkelon, was nearly hit last month during a tour of the area when Gaza-based Palestinian forces fired rockets at his entourage. Another of his guards was wounded in that attack.

In other violence, a Jewish man was found stabbed and bleeding outside a gate leading to Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday. Witnesses cited by Israel National News said the attacker escaped into a nearby Arab neighborhood.

In other terror-related news, Israeli officials on Thursday announced a drastic increase in security measures on and surrounding aircraft that belong to Israeli airlines in response to concrete intelligence of an imminent Hizballah terror attack. The measures include more armed guards onboard and accompanying Israeli aircraft when they land at and take off from foreign airports.

The Ramallah-based Palestine Press news agency reported that Hamas hoped to use the school to shield some of their heavy US and Iranian-made weapons from Israeli raids and air strikes.

In other Gaza news, Hamas gunmen on Thursday bombed a cemetery where British soldiers who helped liberate the area from Ottoman Turkish rule during World War I are buried.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights later reported that two of its workers and two accompanying Reuters correspondents were attacked by Hamas security forces when they arrived at the scene to interview cemetery guards. The Hamas police reportedly confiscated the reporters' camera memory cards and all video footage taken at the site.

During a one-and-a-half hour audio response to the various questions, Zawahri stated, "We promise our Muslim brothers that we will do the best we can to harm Jews in Israel and the world over, with Allah's help and according to his command."

The terrorist leader reassured supporters that the global jihad is continuing apace, and explained that the withdrawal from Iraq promised by US Democratic presidential candidates would open the door for Al Qaeda attacks in Israel.

He also rebuffed comments criticizing Al Qaeda's brutal and indiscriminate tactics, insisting that Al Qaeda has never intentionally killed innocent civilians.

The Israeli officials said Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discuss the conference, scheduled for next year, when the latter was in Jerusalem earlier in the week.

Israel and the US will reportedly refuse to attend the conference unless the UN and participating nations can offer firm guarantees that it will not descend into an Israel-bashing circus.

A similar conference held in Durban, South Africa in 2001 was quickly dominated by Arab and Muslim states, which hijacked the agenda and turned the focus of the event solely on Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. The Durban conference concluded with a declaration labeling Israel a racist and apartheid state, while almost completely ignoring the numerous human rights crises around the world.

A full-page ad taken out in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major US newspapers on Thursday called on the Bush Administration to openly refuse to attend the upcoming conference and to denounce its anti-Semitic agenda. The ad was endorsed by Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, former CIA Director James Woolsey and other leading political, academic and religious figures.

Arab media reports earlier in the week stated that Syria had mobilized its forces, including calling up reserve troops, in anticipation of an imminent Israeli attack. That news was accompanied by an Israeli army revelation that Hizballah had redeployed most of its missile arsenal within range of the Jewish state and could be planning to attack in the near future.

Hizballah blames Israel for the recent assassination of its co-founder and operations commander Imad Mughniyeh, and has vowed a painful response.

Israeli defense officials suggested that Syria's preparedness for war may be based on knowledge of a forthcoming Hizballah attack, which would presumably precipitate a severe Israeli response.

Fear of an escalation along the northern border increased on Thursday when Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly canceled a planned trip to Germany.

Unnamed sources close to Barak told the Israeli media that the cancelation was due to the situation with Syria and Hizballah, but the Defense Ministry later released a statement claiming that Barak had stayed home because of a heavy workload.

In related news, Damascus on Thursday confirmed a report that it had allowed Iran to set up intelligence gathering listening posts near Syria's border with Israel, and that the Islamic allies were working together to intercept Israeli army communications.

The officer was quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying that while the UN resolution that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War was supposed to push Hizballah out of range of northern Israel, the group has redeployed most of its forces, including medium-range ballistic missiles, south of the Litani River.

Another result of the previous war that was supposed to blunt the Hizballah threat was the injection of an additional 10,000 UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. However, those forces require approval from the Lebanese army to operate inside Lebanese cities and towns, and Hizballah is taking advantage of that by confining its preparations to population centers.

Israeli defense officials said Hizballah could instigate renewed conflict by carrying out low-level cross-border raids on its own, or may use a smaller proxy group to try and hide its own involvement until after Israel responds to the initial aggression.

In related news, a large London-based Arabic newspaper reported on Wednesday that Syria had started mobilizing its army, including calling up reserve forces, in preparation for an imminent Israeli attack.

In an interview with the Israeli news agency The Media Line later in the day, a senior Syrian military official denied the report, but said Damascus is certain that Israel will soon attack Hizballah and is preparing for that eventuality in other ways.

The Syrian indicated that if the region is again plunged into open warfare, Syria would use its ballistic missiles, and not its ground forces, to strike Israel.