Finally bowing to US pressure, Israeli forces pulled out of the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala late last night, 11 days after they moved in.
But the army was simultaneously boosting its deployment around Jenin and Tulkarm after Palestinian gunmen, believed to have come from those two towns, killed five Israelis in two separate attacks inside Israel: Two gunmen drove into the centre of Hadera yesterday afternoon, and opened fire at a bus-stop outside the town library, killing four women and leaving 30 people injured; hours earlier, gunmen shot dead an Israeli soldier as he sat in his car near a northern kibbutz.
Israel had been scheduled to withdraw its forces from the Bethlehem-Beit Jala area on Saturday night, but postponed the move because, earlier on Saturday, Palestinian gunmen fired from Beit Jala on the Jewish neighbourhood of Gilo and there were clashes also in Bethlehem. Yesterday, by contrast, that area, at the southern edge of Jerusalem, was quiet, and after consultations with senior colleagues, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, last night agreed to proceed with the pull-out.
The Palestinian Authority's West Bank security chief, Mr Jibril Rajoub, was present in Bethlehem as the tanks rolled out, overseeing the deployment of his own forces to ensure that the Israelis did not come under fire.
On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat had asserted that the repeated postponement of the troop withdrawal - the army has been deployed on Palestinian territory around six major West Bank cities since the October 17th assassination of the Israeli Tourism minister Mr Rehavam Ze'evi - demonstrated that Israel was following a "policy not to achieve real peace". In the wake of yesterday's shootings, however, Mr Arafat took a more conciliatory tone, condemning the attacks and pledging to track down those responsible.
In a similar shift toward moderation, a spokesman for Mr Sharon, who had earlier accused Mr Arafat of failing to meet a commitment to "bring the situation under control and safeguard peace" in the areas Israel was set to leave, said last night that the Palestinian Authority had "started to comply with their obligations". If calm is now maintained in the Bethlehem area, the American-brokered withdrawal agreement provides for similar Israeli pull-backs from the other West Bank towns in the coming days.
Yesterday's shootings underlined that, even with Palestinian cities surrounded by Israeli troops, gunmen have no great difficulty getting through to carry out attacks inside Israel. The two Hadera gunmen drove into town in a shiny red Mitsubishi jeep, sped down the main road and "fired in all directions", according to Mr Doron Kotler, an Israeli plainclothes policeman who, along with other colleagues, eventually shot the pair dead.
The gunmen had apparently set out from Jenin - a known hotbed of extremism, where the Israeli troops are on particularly high alert given the town's history as a source of suicide bombers.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, and released a video showing the two men before they set out.
Israeli security sources said last night, however, that the pair were also Palestinian policemen, and that they had used M-16s rifles that were supplied by Israel to the Authority under the Oslo peace accords.
Responsibility for the shooting close to Kibbutz Metzer, meanwhile, was claimed by a militia group affiliated with Mr Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, which said it was avenging Saturday's killing by Israel of a colleague in the nearby West Bank town of Tulkarm. Palestinian officials said three Israeli tanks had rolled into the city, prompting gun battles.