Israel's security cabinet has endorsed a plan to gradually reoccupy Palestinian land until attacks on Israelis stop.
The move represents a shift in its strategy after an especially bloody week in the region.
As the army readied for what Israel Radio said would be a wide-scale offensive, a military spokesman said a tank crew had made a mistake yesterday in shelling Palestinian curfew violators, killing three children and a teacher.
Palestinian suicide bombings, a shooting at a Jewish settlement and Israeli military strikes killed 33 Israelis and 12 Palestinians this week. The attacks delayed plans by US President Bush to deliver a speech outlining US recommendations for Mideast peacemaking.
Yesterday, the Security Cabinet of Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon met and upheld the harsher policy of permanently occupying Palestinian land.
Israel Radio said that while a major operation was in the offing, officials did not believe it would match the scale of the massive, six-week military campaign launched in March that shattered Palestinian infrastructure, kept Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat imprisoned in his battered headquarters and left scores of Palestinians dead or arrested.
However, Mr Amos Yaron, director general of the Defence Ministry, said in an interview today on Israel Radio the six-week operation did not go far enough and that the military was preparing a "crushing and decisive" response to the attacks.
"We have to take much more massive action than we have up until now. If this entails entering the territories and staying there a long time, then we will have to consider it," he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers returning from the funerals of victims of a Palestinian attack killed a Palestinian man and torched a home and a car in the West Bank village of Hawara, villagers said.
The settlers allegedly went on the rampage after burying a mother and three of her sons, killed when a Palestinian gunman infiltrated the nearby settlement of Itamar on Thursday night.
In line with Israel's new reoccupation policy, about 50 Israeli tanks entered Nablus, the West Bank's largest city, after the Itamar infiltration. Israeli forces had previously moved into Jenin after a suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Tuesday killed 19 Israelis .
In Jenin, rumours of a brief break in a three-day-old military curfew sent residents rushing to the market to replenish supplies yesterday. When troops searching the area for an explosives laboratory spotted a group of Palestinians heading toward them in violation of the curfew, a tank fired two shells to deter them, the army said.
The army spokesman's office said an initial inquiry "indicates that the force erred in its action", and that an investigation was in progress.
Jenin hospitals identified the dead as Ahmed Ghazawi, six; his 12-year-old brother Jamil; Sajedah Famahwi, six; and Helal Shetta, a schoolteacher who was about 50.
Another 24 people were wounded in the incident, many of them children, hospital officials said.
AP