The man was killed overnight when two soldiers guarding the entrance to Netzarim, just south of Gaza City, spotted him and another man approaching the settlement's security fence and opened fire in their direction, Israeli military sources said Monday.
Army patrols swept the area immediately after the incident but, failing to find anything, postponed the search to the following day.
In daylight Monday, a patrol discovered the body of a Palestinian man armed with a knife.
The corpse was to be handed over to the Palestinian authorities later in the day.
The death brought the number of people killed since the beginning of the intifada in late September 2000 to 3,131, including 2,354 Palestinians and 719 Israelis.
In the south of the Gaza Strip, two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were injured in separate incidents Monday morning, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.
Two Palestinian men, aged 30 and 70, were slightly hurt by shrapnel in the early hours when an Israeli tank fired a shell and heavy machinegun fire at buildings in Rafah refugee camp which lies close to the border with Egypt, Palestinian security and medical sources said.
The two men were standing in front of their homes when they were wounded, and there were no clashes in the area at the time, the sources said.
An Israeli soldier was also lightly injured after being hit by Palestinian sniper fire near the southern town of Khan Yunis, an army spokesman said, adding that the sniper escaped.
In northern West Bank, four Palestinians were wounded, two of them seriously, when Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian stonethrowers and a civilian car in two separate incidents Monday, Palestinian sources said.
One Palestinian was very seriously injured after coming under heavy machinegun fire from an Israeli tank as he was driving in Burkin village, two kilometres (one mile) west of the town of Jenin, security and medical sources said.
It was not clear why the soldiers had fired on the car, they added.
Farther south, three Palestinians were injured, one seriously, after troops opened fire on stone-throwers protesting a local militant's arrest in Salem, a village east of Nablus, medical and security sources said.
A 54-year-old man, who was walking down the street, was hit in the stomach and said to be in serious condition, while another two men, aged 22 and 25, were said to be moderately wounded.
The disturbances broke out after troops moved into the village and surrounded the home of Nassim Karkari, a wanted Palestinian belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s mainstream Fatah (news - web sites) movement, security sources said.
The standoff continued for several hours until Karkari was arrested.
Israeli troops also arrested four wanted Fatah activists in the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem.
And earlier Monday, troops arrested 16 wanted Palestinian militants, an army spokesman said.
"Five of them were arrested in a house in Balata refugee camp in Nablus with dozens of kilogrammes of explosives and two M16 assault rifles, all of which was seized," he said.
During searches in the area around the northern West Bank town of Jenin, troops discovered 13 home-made bombs which were all detonated in a controlled manner, he added.
Palestinian sources said two of the men arrested were senior members of the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the radical Islamic group Hamas.
