The EU called on Israel and the Palestinians yesterday to end their cycle of violence and restart peace talks.
"The attacks in Israel must cease and the reprisals must cease. These military and violent actions have reached the limit," said Mr Guy Verhofstadt, the Prime Minister of Belgium which holds the EU's six-month presidency. Mr Verhofstadt was speaking in Paris after meeting his French counterpart, Mr Lionel Jospin.
"It is necessary for the EU as well as the US, the Russian Federation and the moderate Arab countries to continue their pressure - more effectively than before - on the two parties," he said.
"We have missed an opportunity because in the first weeks of November the level of violence was much lower than before. It is by political negotiations, by political solutions, and not by violence, that a resolution will be found," he said.
In Britain, the government urged Israel and the Palestinians to restore stability. "It is incumbent on both sides to do what they can to try and stabilise the situation and to move forward from here," said a spokesman for the Prime Minister, Mr Blair.
"We regret all the violence which is happening in the region. Yesterday's attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa were appalling . . . and Israel is entitled to its security," he said of the weekend suicide bombings. "Equally we have to all look at what we can do to move forward because the cycle of violence is ultimately self-defeating."
Jordan's government urged Israel to show restraint and warned that violence will only fuel more violence. "These air raids will only lead to more violence and will not solve the problem," the government spokesman, Mr Saleh Kallab, said.
"We ask the Israeli government to show restraint and avoid any action that further complicates the situation," said Mr Kallab. He reiterated Jordan's condemnation of the weekend suicide attacks, but stressed that Israel's retaliatory raids were also unacceptable "Peace is the only option facing the Israeli and Palestinian people," he said.
He urged both sides "to give a chance" to US peace efforts underway "to reactivate the peace process and set up a Palestinian state," and called for "serious intervention from the international community to put an end to this dangerous explosion of violence".
The Israeli air raids came as Jordan's King Abdullah II and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt held an urgent summit in Cairo on the spiralling violence. Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries to have a peace treaty with Israel and maintain good contacts with both Mr Arafat and Washington.
The talks ended without any statement and King Abdullah headed home.
Iran condemned Israel's attacks and what it called the indifference of international organisations in the face of the "terrorist attacks" by the Jewish state.
The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly yesterday for a resolution calling on all states with embassies in Jerusalem to move them out of the city.
The non-binding resolution, which has been put to the assembly and adopted by a strong majority every year for more than two decades, was passed in a 130-2 vote, with 10 abstentions.
The resolution declared that Israel's Basic Law, which proclaimed Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the state, was "illegal and therefore null and void and has no validity whatsoever".