MIDDLE EAST: Israeli tanks closed on the Ramallah compound of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat last night, only hours after a suicide bomber ripped apart a crowded bus in downtown Tel Aviv, killing five people and himself and injuring over 50 people, six of them seriously.
The decision to blockade Mr Arafat's compound appeared to be an effort to isolate further the Palestinian leader.
One Palestinian inside the compound, a member of Mr Arafat's presidential guard, was killed in an exchange of fire with troops. Having surrounded Mr. Arafat's compound, Israel said it was demanding the surrender of some 20 militants said to be holed up inside and whom Israeli officials say have been involved in carrying out attacks.
A foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Gideon Meir, said that soldiers were using loudspeakers to call on the militants to give themselves up.
The army also reimposed a curfew in Palestinian towns across much of the West Bank in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon convened his Cabinet last night to discuss a response to the latest spate of attacks, in which eight Israelis have been killed since Wednesday morning.
The suicide attack - the second in Israel in the space of just 24 hours - shattered a growing sense among many Israelis that a six-week hiatus in bombings was a sign that the two-year-old Palestinian uprising might be waning.
The bomber blew himself up shortly after boarding the bus, which was travelling through an area of Tel Aviv lined with shops and restaurants.
"I ran into the bus and began taking out the injured," said Mr Roni Rejwan, the owner of a business in the area. "There were dozens of people injured, lying in the bus. I took off my shirt and tried to put tourniquets on the seriously injured." There were conflicting admissions of responsibility, with reports that both the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups had carried out the bombing.
As after every attack, Israel immediately blamed the Palestinian Authority and Mr Arafat, whom Mr Sharon has repeatedly accused of doing nothing to halt violence. "The Palestinians have jumped on the terror bandwagon and are keen on unleashing murderous deeds at every opportunity," a spokesman for the Prime Minister said.
With the Israeli army already spread throughout the West Bank where it is conducting daily arrests of Palestinian militants, it was not clear what additional steps the government might order the military to take.
One official, speaking anonymously, said that Mr Sharon, who had cooled his original enthusiasm for evicting Mr Arafat from the territories, might be reconsidering.
Tourism Minister Mr Yitzhak Levy, of the right-wing National Religious Party, said the government had erred in lifting the curfew on certain Palestinian areas. "I suggest we reimpose the curfew until the Palestinians understand that if they make our life tough, we will make their lives even tougher."
The Palestinian Authority issued a condemnation, as it generally does after every suicide bombing, saying it opposed attacks on Israeli civilians because they harmed "the national interest of the Palestinian people," and provided Mr Sharon with "an excuse" to continue his "policy of curfews and destruction."
Some Palestinian officials insisted that the devastating blows delivered to the Authority's security apparatus by the Israeli army, especially over the last six months, had made it impossible for it to do anything to limit the violence.
After six weeks without a major attack, life in Israel had begun to regain some semblance of normality, with Israelis heading back to public places like restaurants and cafes which they had abandoned as a result of the ongoing suicide attacks.
Most experts had put the lull down to the intensive military activity in the occupied territories, not to any shift among the Palestinians.
According to one media report, Israel's Shin Bet security service received 46 warnings about specific planned attacks last week.