Israeli settlers rampage after blood-soaked week

Armed Israeli settlers appeared to have taken the law into their own hands yesterday by raiding a West Bank town as divisions emerged within the Israeli government over how to respond to the latest wave of Palestinian attacks.

Palestinian witnesses said that a convoy of Jewish settlers, some armed with M-16 assault rifles, descended on the Arab town of Howara and killed a 22-year-old Arab man and set fire to cars. Israeli police said they were checking the reports.

The attack took place while the settlement of Itamar – built on occupied territory just south of Nablus – was burying the victims of Thursday evening's attack in which a Palestinian gunman killed five people, including a mother and three of her eight children.

The resumption of sectarian attacks – which were an almost daily feature of the early days of the 21-month intifada – comes as a debate rages within the Israeli government over how to respond to Palestinian assaults, in which 33 Israelis were killed within three days this week – the majority in two suicide bombings in Jerusalem.

There is fury in Israel that Palestinian suicide bombers are again randomly blowing up civilians. There is also deep disappointment that these attacks have resumed less than two months after the Israeli army sent thousands of tanks and troops into the West Bank in its largest offensive against the Palestinians since 1967.

Earlier this week, Ariel Sharon's government said that it intended to reoccupy the pockets of Palestinian-run land on the West Bank – the rest is already Israeli-controlled – and remain "as long as terror continued". It described this plan as an important change of policy, although its forces have already been conducting almost daily raids into Palestinian-administered towns, and for months encircled Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. The policy was coupled with a partial call-up of reservists.

But divisions have emerged over the reoccupation plan within Mr Sharon's coalition government. Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Defence Minister, and the Foreign Minister Shimon Peres – both from Labour – denied that they have agreed to the new policy. Yesterday, in response to the Itamar killings, Israeli forces sent 50 tanks into Nablus, and dug in further in Jenin, but it was unclear how long they planned to stay.

A meeting of Israel's security cabinet yesterday appeared slightly to soften its position, saying only that the army should remain in Palestinian areas as long as necessary. Concerns abound within Israel that total reoccupation of the West Bank would lead to more casualties in the army. The Palestinians have portrayed the reoccupation policy as part of a long-held plan by Mr Sharon to seize control of all of the West Bank, crushing any chance of a Palestinian state.

Underlying this debate is a general uncertainty in Israel over its next move. Assassinations, blockades, curfews, mass arrests, demolitions, and the bombing of the Palestinian infrastructure have failed to stop the attacks. Figures issued by the Israeli Defence Forces yesterday said that in the two months since the end of the offensive, called Operation Defensive Shield, 84 Israelis have been killed, and 276 injured.

The international community is pressing Mr Sharon to couple his many conditions for talks – led by a demand for a complete end to Palestinian violence and major reforms in Palestinian society – with political moves, arguing that no progress will be possible unless the Palestinians have some form of hope. But every new murder of a civilian hardens the views of the extremists. Yesterday the latter made their views clear in a full page advertisement inThe Jerusalem Post, a sister paper of The Daily Telegraph that has written extensively on the problem of incitement in the Palestinian media. The unsigned advertisement called on the army to respond to suicide bombings with artillery and air assaults on the killer's home area – attacks which the advert admitted would "inevitably kill and injure hundreds, even thousands, of Arabs".