ISRAEL yesterday allowed thousands of Palestinian workers to cross its borders, just three days after gunmen killed three members of a family in a drive by shooting.
The army said the easing of restrictions on Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, suspended last Friday in the wake of the latest killings, would be resumed.
The move is a clear signal from the new right wing government that it no longer sees border closures as an adequate or logical response to militant attacks.
More than three years ago the then Labour led government headed by Yitzhak Rabin introduced the closure policy, seen by many Palestinians as crude collective punishment.
The policy was applied more vigorously by Rabin's successor, Mr Shimon Peres, most recently in the wake of a wave of suicide bombings in late February and early March.
Between then and the May elections which brought the Likud leader, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, to power, the daily flow of Palestinian workers was reduced to a trickle.
The aim was not so much to prevent further attacks as to assuage Israeli public opinion, and force the self rule Palestinian Authority of Mr Yasser Arafat to take action against the militants the policy also underlined Labour's strategic goal of separation confining the Palestinians to their own enclaves.
Mr Netanyahu's Likud Party, on the other hand, wants to maintain Israel's hegemony over the occupied territories, which are economically dependent on Israel.
Although security remains the paramount issue, the Israeli government is clearly not looking to the Palestinians to defeat the militants. Mr Netanyahu has frequently urged the self rule authority to do more, but he has also warned that he will, if he thinks fit, send Israeli forces back into the autonomous enclaves.
Meanwhile, the new government has sent further signals of its resolve to tighten Israel's grip on the occupied West Bank. A spokesman for a delegation of Jewish settlers in the territory, who met Mr Netanyahu yesterday, said the Prime Minister had responded "very positively" to their demand for the lifting of restrictions on further settlements.