Large numbers of Israeli troops, backed by armoured vehicles, thrust into the northern West Bank town of Jenin early yesterday morning in what Israel said was a response to a suicide attack earlier in the week that killed 14 passengers on a bus.
Hours later, though, at the southern end of the West Bank, troops began pulling out of parts of the city of Hebron.
The militant Islamic Jihad admitted responsibility for the attack on Monday, in which two teenage bombers, who it said had come from Jenin, drove a jeep laden with 100 kg of explosives into a bus in northern Israel.
At least three members of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah party were seriously injured in firefights during the incursion into Jenin and the adjacent refugee camp of the same name. Military sources said the army was conducting house-to-house searches for weapons and militants, who it said were planning to carry out attacks in the coming days. Palestinians said troops imposed a curfew and took control of at least 30 homes and apartment buildings in Jenin.
"Jenin has turned into the capital of terror," Defence Minister Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said yesterday. "We would like to ease the closures and allow humanitarian relief but we can't do this when we have to defend our home . . . We have no choice but to go in and clean up." Mr Arafat called the raid "a continuation of crimes committed by Israeli soldiers and settlers against our people".
In Hebron, the redeployment was partial, with the army ending patrols in the Palestinian part of the divided city and withdrawing from several Palestinian homes used as outposts. But soldiers remained in two areas overlooking the Jewish enclave in the city from where the military said Palestinian gunmen have fired at settlers.
The Hebron pullback is part of a plan floated by Mr Ben-Eliezer and which calls for the handing over of areas to the Palestinians that Israel has reoccupied, on condition the Palestinian Authority move against militants operating there.
The Jenin raid and the Hebron pullout came as the special US envoy to the Middle East, Mr William Burns, wound up a round of talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials over a "road map" for peace, drafted by the Quartet - leaders from the US, Russia, United Nations and the European Union.
The plan calls for far-reaching reforms in the Palestinian Authority, an end to violence, a withdrawal of Israeli troops from reoccupied Palestinian areas, and the phased creation of an independent Palestinian state, which is to come into existence by 2005.
Mr Burns, who steered clear of Mr Arafat during his trip as part of the Bush administration's policy of shunning the Palestinian leader, met yesterday with Palestinian legislator Ms Hanan Ashrawi, only a few hundred metres from Mr Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
Ms Ashrawi told the US envoy that the Palestinians were particularly unhappy with an element in the plan which calls for parliamentary elections by next year, but does not mention presidential elections. The Americans and Israelis, who hope to sideline Mr Arafat, fear that he will be re-elected by a significant majority if presidential elections are held.
Ms Ashrawi said the omission was tantamount to trying to run the Palestinians' affairs for them.
While the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, who met Mr Burns on Thursday, said he accepted the road map "in principle", Israel did insist that the security component of the plan had to be strengthened. Mr Ben-Eliezer said it did not make specific demands on the Palestinians in the security realm, and only called on them to make a general ceasefire declaration.