ISRAELI forces searched all day in vain yesterday for the gunmen, believed to be members of a PLO splinter group, who shot dead two Israelis and badly wounded another.
Mr Eli Munk and his daughter in law, Rachel, died, and Rachel's husband, Zeev, was badly hurt early yesterday when the gunmen fired dozens of bullets at their car near the town of Beit Shemesh, about to miles inside Israel from the occupied West Bank.
Ballistic tests showed that the same weapons were used in another drive by shooting, on the same stretch of road last month, in which two more Israelis died. Israel believes that members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a PLO offshoot opposed to the peace process, are responsible.
Yesterday's killings were the first by suspected Palestinians since Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline government took office six weeks ago, and the prime minister reacted by sealing off the West Bank from Israel, and demanding an all out effort by his security forces to find the gunmen. Assuming them to have come from, and fled back to, Hebron, the only West Bank city still under Israel's control, Mr Netanyahu closed off Hebron altogether.
The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, condemned the killings, and criticised the closure as did Hebron's Palestinian mayor, Mr Mustafa Natsche, who noted that the attack could give Israel an excuse for further postponing its much delayed military pullout from the city.
And, indeed, the Israeli Health Minister, Mr Tsachi Hanegbi, said last night that Israel would not leave Hebron, or fulfil other terms of its peace accords with the Palestinians, if terrorism continued.
Mr Netanyahu's government won election on a promise to bring Israel "peace with security", and a pledge to force Mr Arafat to take a tougher stance against Palestinian extremists.
However, if the gunmen involved in yesterday's shooting did come from Israeli held Hebron, the prime minister can hardly blame Mr Arafat for not preventing the attack.
While the shooting and the closure place more strain on Israeli Palestinian relations, meetings in Jerusalem yesterday indicated that fragile Israeli Syrian contacts are now at breaking point. Mr Dennis Ross, the US Middle East peace talks co-ordinator, arrived in Jerusalem fresh from talks with President Assad in Syria acknowledging that "no one should have any illusions that we are just around the corner of a breakthrough."
Over the past two years, Mr Ross was one of several US officials speaking confidently and, as it turned out, mistakenly of the real potential for an Israel Syria peace accord. His change of tone yesterday reflects Mr Netanyahu's disinclination to relinquish the Golan Heights, and Mr Assad's disinterest in the new Israeli leadership's preferred approach trying to reach an accommodation that could bring calm to the Israeli Lebanese border. Two Hizbullah gunmen were killed there early yesterday in a clash with Israeli troops.
Mr Ross reported yesterday that the Syrian president has no desire for talks with Israel on a "Lebanon first" deal and with that, the chances of any substantive negotiations between Israel and Syria in the foreseeable future appear to have disappeared.