On a day in which another three Palestinian teenagers were killed by Israeli troops, the Israeli military yesterday closed off Palestinian communities in the West Bank, limiting travel, in response to shooting ambushes on Monday in which four Israelis - two civilians and two soldiers - were killed on the roads.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, cut short his trip to the US, skipping a meeting with the British Prime Minister en route, to hurry home to deal with the deepening crisis.
A senior official in the Mr Barak's travel party said he had not ruled out another three-way summit with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Mr Bill Clinton before the US President left office in January. Without a sharp reduction in Palestinian violence, however, the official said, Mr Barak would not return to the table.
Israeli army roadblocks partially severed West Bank communities yesterday. Asked about the siege, Mr Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, acting Prime Minister in Mr Barak's absence, said: "The minute the situation is bad for us, it will be very bad for them [Palestinians]".
Two Palestinian teenagers, aged 13 and 19, were killed in clashes with Israeli troops near Khan Younis in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, while a 15year-old was killed in clashes near Ramallah. Over 200 people have been killed since the violence began on September 28th, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
Until Monday, Palestinian shooting attacks had taken place almost exclusively at night and militia gunmen had directed their fire mainly at Israeli army outposts and Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
But that changed with Monday's daytime West Bank drive-by shootings in which three Israelis were killed. Mr Ben Eliezer accused the Palestinians of adopting a new strategy called "death on the roads".
Mr Arafat yesterday dismissed the allegations, blaming Israel for the death of 200 Palestinians. And members of Mr Arafat's Fatah party pointed to the assassination of Hussein Abayat, a senior Fatah member, by an Israeli assault helicopter last week, as proof that it was Israel which had escalated the conflict.
The Palestinians, who today mark a symbolic declaration of independence by Mr Arafat in 1988, have vowed to impose a counter-siege on Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. Mr Hussein al-Sheikh, a Fatah official, said Palestinian activists would "cut off roads to Jewish settlements".
In Chicago on Monday Mr Barak insisted that Israel had adopted a policy of restraint in the current clashes. "We are trying to minimise bloodshed and prevent a widening of the confrontation," he said, "but we will know how to respond."
Officials close to Mr Barak yesterday said they did not expect him to order a massive response to Monday's killings. They said such a move would only increase the chances of international intervention, something Mr Arafat has demanded. Mr Barak has vociferously opposed any internationalisation of the conflict, fearing it would undercut Israeli sovereignty.