Israeli forces detained at least 14 Palestinians in the West Bank in a new sweep for militants today as international peace efforts looked likely to be eclipsed by wider Middle East developments.
An Israeli army spokesman said 12 "terror suspects" were nabbed overnight around Ramallah, political base of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and two in the area of Bethlehem. Troops continued scouring the biblical city after daybreak.
Yesterday, the army killed two militants in the West Bank. Hamas, an Islamic group sworn to Israel's destruction which has spearheaded suicide bombings in a more than two-year-old independence uprising, issued new calls for revenge.
The United States has tried to keep the violence contained so as not to buck its campaign to disarm Iraq, and forms part of a "Quartet" of Middle East mediators due to meet next week on a peace plan initiated more that six months ago.
But diplomats said it was unlikely the so-called "road map" for three-stage rapprochement between Israel and the Palestinians, culminating in security for the former and statehood for the latter, would be completed on December 20.
"The signal the United States is sending us is that you should not expect a completed road map. Our side is arguing back on that," a European diplomat said yesterday.
The Quartet mediators - the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - broadly agree on what the plan should include but disagree on when to release it. The Israelis and Palestinians disagree on the more fundamental question of how specific the plan should be.