The Israeli cabinet is meeting today to discuss a military response to the Palestinian attack in Hebron on Friday in which twelve soldiers and police were killed.
The country's Prime Minister, Arial Sharon, is understood to be under pressure from members of his right-wing government to retaliate with the former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu calling for the expulsion of Yasser Arafat.
In the first stage of what is expected to be an extensive military operation in the West Bank city, Israeli armoured vehicles poured into Hebron yesterday in support of troops who commandeered homes and buildings at strategic sites.
The move represents a reoccupation of parts of Hebron that came under Palestinian control under an interim peace agreement that Benjamin Netanyahu signed as prime minister in 1997.
Some 450 Jewish settlers, considered among the most extreme in the West Bank, live in heavily guarded enclaves in Hebron alongside more than 130,000 Palestinians.
Netanyahu, vying with Sharon to lead their Likud party ahead of a January 28 general election, said peace deals with the Palestinians were dead and called again for President Yasser Arafat to be expelled.
"The timing of the expulsion should be debated in a small forum, but it is clear to everyone he will be removed," Netanyahu told Israel Radio before the cabinet began its weekly session to consider a further response to Friday's ambush.
Israeli media reports said the settlers had already entered heavily guarded Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron, and the gunmen had directed their attack at soldiers protecting them.
Troops and security men from Kiryat Arba pursued the gunmen into an alley, where the Israelis were cut down in an ambush.
"It wasn't a massacre, it was a battle," said Matan Vilnai, a former general and a leading member of the centre-left Labour party that bolted Sharon's coalition last month.
The ambush, which caused the heaviest Israeli death toll in the divided city since the start of a Palestinian uprising two years ago, threatened to start a round of violence despite U.S. calls for restraint as it prepares for a possible war on Iraq.
Israeli military and government spokesmen portrayed the Hebron bloodshed as a "massacre" and said Jewish settlers walking home from Sabbath eve prayers had been targeted.
However, Israeli media reports said the settlers had already entered heavily guarded Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron, and the gunmen had directed their attack at soldiers protecting them.
Troops and security men from Kiryat Arba pursued the gunmen into an alley, where the Israelis were cut down in an ambush.
"It wasn't a massacre, it was a battle," said Matan Vilnai, a former general and a leading member of the centre-left Labour party that bolted Sharon's coalition last month.
The heavy Israeli casualties raised questions in Israel over how its vaunted military could emerge so bloodied from a battle with three gunmen.
Settlers living on occupied land have been frequent targets during the uprising in which at least 1,664 Palestinians and 639 Israelis have been killed since September 2000. The international community regards settlements as illegal under international law.
Agencies,