At least 16 people were killed and more than 80 were injured in a devastating series of Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets yesterday.
President Bush, condemning "a few killers who want to stop the peace process", urged all those who yearned for peace "in the Arab lands" and elsewhere to do "everything we possibly can to stop the terror".
Meanwhile, more than 10,000 Palestinian supporters of Hamas marched through Gaza City yesterday evening to celebrate the worst of yesterday's attacks: a suicide bombing which killed10 people including the bomber on a bus north of Lake Galilee in northern Israel.
Hamas said the bombing was the "second response" to Israel's assassination last month of Salah Shehade, the leader of their armed wing. Last Wednesday the group admitted responsibility for a suicide bombing which killed seven people at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
The Israeli government charged that the Palestinian Authority, headed by Yasser Arafat, bore overall responsibility for the attacks, and the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, cancelled tentative plans to hold talks with two relatively new ministerial appointees to the PA at which the sides were to have discussed ways to calm 22 months of Intifada conflict.
"What have you got to talk (about) with a Palestinian leadership that continues to harbour and support terrorist activity?" asked Mr Ra'anan Gissin, a spokesman for Mr Sharon.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the bus bombing but said Mr Sharon's government was to blame because of what one official called Israel's "crimes against our people". Far from backing the Sharon government, said an aide to Mr Arafat, "the United States should now cut its support for Israel".
However, some Palestinian figures issued categorical denunciations of the bombing. Dr Hannah Nasr, president of the Birzeit University, urged fellow Palestinians: "Let's not lose our humanity."
Hamas officials vowed to carry out further and more devastating bombings, both to "avenge" the assassination of Shehade and to force an Israeli military retreat.
Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Defence Minister, convened military and intelligence chiefs last night to discuss ways to counter the intensifying attacks. The army has stepped up its policy of demolishing the homes of the families of bombers and other alleged Intifada kingpins, blowing up nine buildings yesterday.
Mr Ben-Eliezer said that these moves, and ongoing steps towards exiling bombers' relatives from the West Bank to Gaza, were starting to deter would-be attackers, who were increasingly concerned that their families might suffer. Tellingly, in that light, Hamas chose not to issue the name of the man who carried out yesterday morning's suicide bombing.
Israeli officials said the bomber had apparently crossed into Israel from Jenin. He boarded the bus as it travelled through the Galilee, and detonated the device not far from the grave of a venerated sage that has become a popular site of pilgrimage.
The civilian bus was ripped to shreds by the blast, one side torn away like a scrap of paper. Six of those killed were civilians, including two Filipinos and an Israeli Arab. Another three were soldiers returning to base. Mr Boaz Altshuler, a passenger who had been about to get off the bus when it was blown up, and who was wounded, said he felt "a ball of fire in the face" and saw "parts of people" flying by.
Later yesterday morning, a Palestinian teenager opened fire on a lorry owned by the Bezeq phone company, killing a security guard, just outside Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem. He was then shot dead by Israeli police. An Arab Jerusalemite was also killed in the exchange. Earlier yesterday, soldiers killed an armed Palestinian who they said was trying to infiltrate a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.