JERUSALEM -- Israeli tanks entered the West Bank city of Ramallah last night, setting up another showdown with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hours after the second suicide bomber in two days blew himself up in Jerusalem, killing seven Israelis.
Witnesses said Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers entered Ramallah from two directions and headed toward the center of town, where Arafat has his headquarters.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli helicopters hovered over two refugee camps last night and fired several missiles, hitting a steel factory to the south and offices of suspected militants near Gaza City in the north.
Early today Israeli forces entered the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Qalqiliya, and declared curfews, the military said in a statement.
Troops also moved into Beitunia, a suburb of Ramallah, and searched for suspects. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three others were wounded in a shootout in Qalqiliya, the military said.
The latest suicide bombings have stalled a U.S. initiative to halt Middle East violence and likely will accelerate plans initiated early yesterday by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to seize Palestinian areas and hold them until the violence stops -- a significant shift in policy that could lead to a full-scale reoccupation of the West Bank.
Among the dead in yesterday's blast -- toward the end of evening rush hour at the French Hill junction, north of downtown Jerusalem -- were a 6-year-old girl and an 18-month-old baby. The busy crossroads, a frequent target, is typically packed with people waiting for buses or driving to and from work.
Yesterday's attack came as Jerusalem residents were still burying the dead from Tuesday morning's bus bombing, which killed 19 Israelis and the Palestinian bomber.
"This war continued yesterday, continues today and will continue tomorrow," Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert told reporters at the scene of yesterday's bombing, while calling for "an ongoing military operation so there won't be anything left that can threaten us with terror."
Israeli police said the bomber got out of a car near a hitchhiking post and walked to the bus stop, which is protected against car bombs by a line of steel posts. As two police officers approached, the man ran away and triggered the bomb as an officer tried to tackle him. The officer was critically wounded.
The blast blew out the back and sides of a bus shelter, leaving only a concrete bench and roof. Debris was scattered over a wide area, and a wall in back of the bus stand was charred black.
One body lay on the sidewalk; several people died shortly after arriving at hospitals. The body of an infant remained in an overturned carriage, and rescue workers covered it with a black tarpaulin.
The Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the explosion.
The French Hill neighborhood has been attacked so often that police armed with assault rifles are permanently stationed there. The junction, on the main road to Ramallah, attracts a large number of Israeli soldiers waiting for buses and is near several Palestinian villages.
Yesterday's attack was the 71st suicide bombing in Israel since the start of the uprising in late September 2000. The Palestinian campaign, which has seen one bombing every 8.5 days, has left 248 Israelis dead and more than 3,000 injured.
The latest attack came as a U.S. peace initiative was gathering speed, and demonstrates how militant groups can steer the Middle East agenda by using violence to thwart negotiations that they oppose.
Within an hour of the attack last night, Bush postponed his speech on the peace initiative indefinitely. Now, even a trip by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been delayed.
"It's hard to get people to focus on peace today when there's still suffering from the consequences of terrorism as we speak," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The president wants to give a speech at a time when it will have the maximum impact to bring the maximum prospects for peace to the region."
U.S. officials did not criticize Israel for again taking over West Bank land, though they said they hope that the occupation is not permanent.
Bush is expected to propose that a Palestinian state be created before borders are agreed upon between Israel and the Palestinians. But administration officials said yesterday that Bush won't be prepared to recognize such a state until the Palestinians undergo sweeping reforms to make their government democratic, to end corruption and build a security service capable of cracking down on suicide bombers.
Such reforms cannot be accomplished before the end of this year, officials said.
Nabil Shaath, a top Palestinian negotiator, said yesterday in Washington that Palestinians won't declare a state unless the United States and Western European countries are ready to recognize the pre-1967 boundary as the legitimate border between Israel and Palestine. Such recognition would reverse long-standing U.S. policy, which calls for the border to be negotiated.
Such discussions appeared moot yesterday.
With each subsequent attack in Israel, Sharon warned, more land would be seized in the West Bank. Israel has tried quick incursions to arrest suspected militants and longer occupations of more than a month, but neither has crushed militant groups.
Palestinian officials complained that Sharon's new strategy was the start of permanent reoccupation and the end of limited Palestinian self-rule, granted in 1994 after the Oslo accords were signed, and was aimed at thwarting Bush's peace plan.
"Sharon is trying to foil any international effort aimed at reviving the peace process before such an effort begins," Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said in a statement to the Reuters news agency. "Sharon is trying to abort every effort."
The new Israeli entries into the West Bank, which began early yesterday in Qalqilya, Nablus and Jenin, prompted Palestinians to accuse Sharon of deliberately sabotaging the White House.
Fleischer said Bush "hopes that whatever actions Israel takes will be cognizant of the fact that the path to peace must still be pursued and that Israel has to remember the consequences of its actions today for what happens tomorrow."
Early yesterday, Israeli troops rounded up hundreds of Palestinian males in West Bank cities and searched for wanted militants. They reported arms caches and bomb-making labs -- apparently quickly rebuilt after the last prolonged army occupation of the city ended a month ago.
It appeared that Israeli troops planned for a prolonged stay in Jenin, at the northern tip of the West Bank and regarded as a stronghold for the militant group Islamic Jihad. Solders were seen driving in trailers loaded with small buildings.
Resistance was reported to be light in Jenin and Nablus, but gunbattles were still under way last night outside a house of a suspected militant in Qalqilya.
Israeli officials said last night that more cities would be taken in response to the French Hill bombing.
But some political analysts doubted yesterday that Sharon intends to remain in the West Bank for a long period and suggested that his new plan was nothing more than strong rhetoric to appease right-wing factions of his government who want to exile Arafat.
"I don't think that Sharon or most Israelis want to stay in the territories long," said Efraim Inbar, a security expert at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "Israeli society has decided that it can't stomach occupation."
Sharon is against giving the Palestinians a state now, Inbar said, "because he doesn't want to give them something for terrorism." He said that the Palestinians "have a provisional state now, and they failed."
But Palestinians argue that the violence will decrease or even stop once a state is declared. Even with Palestinian autonomy over most of their population, they argue, the Israeli occupation still exists through settlements and army checkpoints.
Munther S. Dajani, chairman of the Political Science Department at Al-Quds University, said that a provisional state such as Bush is alluding to won't work until the Israeli army withdraws from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"A state needs boundaries and sovereignty," Dajani said. "We don't have either. Unfortunately, there has to be a big catastrophe for Bush and Sharon to see the light. Even if Sharon ousts Arafat, so what? The problem was never Arafat. We need to end occupation."
Dajani was one of 30 Palestinian officials, leaders and academics who signed a petition published in a Palestinian newspaper yesterday calling for an end to suicide bombings. He urges that Palestinians and Israelis return to peace talks, even if violence continues.
"We have to go back to the negotiating table," he said. "Why not do it now and cut through the killing of all these innocents on both sides."
Sun staff writer Mark Matthews and wire reports contributed to this article.