Palestinian and Israeli leaders jockeyed over urgent US calls for truce talks today as fighting raged on in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Washington has pushed for intensified efforts to end a year of Israeli-Palestinian violence since last week's terror attacks in New York and Washington.
US President Mr George W. Bush wants to include Arab and Islamic states in his effort. Experts say calming the Israeli-Palestinian violence, in which 579 Palestinians and 167 Israelis have died in a year, would do much to ease that campaign.
As the fighting continued, Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat repeated a ceasefire order in greetings to Israelis, released by his office, to mark the Jewish New Year holiday.
Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon has said Israel will not bend over backwards to help the United States attract Arab countries. Yesterday he blocked his foreign minister, Mr Shimon Peres, from meeting with Mr Arafat, making such talks conditional on at least 48 hours of peace and quiet.
"I have issued strict instructions for a total commitment to the ceasefire and I hope the Israeli government will respond to this peace appeal and will take the decision to cease fire", Mr Arafat said in his letter.
Mr Sharon's aide, Mr Raanan Gissin, said: "We welcome his greetings, but we wish he will really act on his words and take the necessary action to stop the shooting".
Mr Gissin said the Israeli government had not received a copy of the letter.
Mr Sharon said yesterday he was making the ceasefire appeal to Mr Arafat in the light of the US commitment to uproot all the terrorist organisations' networks and in order to prevent continued bloodshed in our region.
While the world continued to focus on events in the United States, the Israeli army announced it would make a 30-kilometre-long area of the West Bank adjacent to the Israeli border off-limits to Palestinians, save for local villagers.
The army called the move a security measure to block suicide bombers from reaching Israeli cities.
"This Israeli plan harms thousands and thousands of Palestinians and kills the Oslo peace deals", Palestinian Information Minister Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters, referring to the 1993 interim Israel-Palestinian peace accords.