Two Palestinians were killed, and an anti-settlement protest in Jerusalem by a group of North American human rights activists was brusquely dispersed, as Israeli-Palestinian tensions intensified.
The first death took place late on Tuesday night, when Israeli troops opened fire on two Palestinians who were apparently trying to place a bomb outside the isolated settlement of Morag in the Gaza Strip. One man was killed, the second ran away.
Israeli military officials said they found explosive materials at the scene.
At the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Ephraim yesterday, an Israeli man stabbed his Palestinian co-worker to death in the back of their delivery truck.
The violence came as the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, continued to ignore US proposals designed to restart the peace process. They provide for a speedy withdrawal by Israel from a further 13 per cent of occupied West Bank land.
While he stalls, right-wing Jewish groups are stepping up their efforts to create "facts on the ground" - cementing a Jewish presence in some of the most hotly-disputed neighbourhoods of Jerusalem.
In the predominantly Arab-populated East Jerusalem district of Silwan, where several Jewish families this week moved into homes they insisted had been legally purchased from their Palestinian owners, several dozen American and Canadian human rights activists held a sit-in yesterday, but were forcibly moved away by Israeli police who said their demonstration was illegal.
Members of the group said they had come to "show solidarity" with Palestinians who had their homes taken away by settlers. The right-wing Elad group claimed the properties were purchased for well above market price.
The intensified right-wing Jewish effort to settle traditionally Arab sectors of Jerusalem prompted the Palestinian Auth ority's Cabinet Secretary, Mr Ahmed Abdel Rahman, to call on Palestinians this week to "mobilise to defend Jerusalem."
Mr Abdel Rahman was reacting to news that a Jewish seminary has been given initial planning permission to build 58 homes in its complex on the Mount of Olives, a site originally designated for an Arab girls' school.