In Washington, US President George W. Bush was set to meet with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to try to win their support for reform of Palestinian institutions.

Hopes of advancing peace talks have been chilled by Tuesday’s Palestinian ambush of a bus traveling to a Jewish settlement on the West Bank that left eight Israelis dead and a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed three other people late Wednesday.

The attacks triggered new jitters and frustration in Israel, whose troops have occupied most major towns in the West Bank and clamped down stifling curfews since the last suicide bombings a month ago. Seven more Palestinians were arrested overnight, military sources said, the army was placed on high alert and road blocks were set up around Tel Aviv in a bid to prevent new suicide strikes.

But Israeli officials had no illusions. "We know that we cannot succeed 100 percent" in preventing Palestinian attacks, government spokesman Avi Pazner told reporters. "We have now a rate of 90 percent, we will try to increase it to 96, 97 or 98 percent.

The Israelis have put on hold plans to resume a dialogue on humanitarian issues and the Defense Ministry announced it would freeze new measures to free up trade and industry restrictions on the Palestinians. Israel suspended plans to ease a military crackdown in the West Bank and pursue talks with moderate Palestinians.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer’s office said plans had been drawn up to relax restrictions imposed on Palestinian civilians after the army reoccupied seven West Bank cities last month, but that they had now been frozen.

"Israel is striving to ease the conditions as much as possible for the broader Palestinian population but Palestinian terror is continuing to perpetuate the suffering (of the population)," it said in a statement.

Calls for even tougher action came from the Israeli right wing, including Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, who urged a drive to crush the Palestinian Authority headed by Yasser Arafat. "We will break up the entire Palestinian security apparatus ... to bring about the complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority," he told Israeli radio early yesterday.

Feelings were running so high that Shlomo Aviner, a leading West Bank rabbi and resident of Beit El settlement, called for the execution of Israelis who refused to do military service in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Tensions were also running high in Jerusalem as nationalist and extremist Jews marked the holiday of Tisha B’Av by demonstrating in front of the Wailing Wall.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the twin attacks Wednesday by a pair of suicide bombers who killed an Israeli and two immigrant workers, including one from Romania, in a poor section of southern Tel Aviv and wounded about 40 other people.

But Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdelrahman added in a statement: "Israel bears part of the responsibility because of its continuing occupation of our territories and our towns."

Palestinian officials and analysts said the latest attacks deepened the dilemma facing Arafat: how to stop the bombings when Israel’s West Bank occupation has crippled the Palestinian Authority.

Bush, who has called for Arafat’s replacement, yesterday was to meet with the foreign ministers of key Arab states in the latest round of Middle East diplomacy. The American leader hoped to secure their support for reform of Palestinian institutions, which he sees as a precondition for the creation of a Palestinian state.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi counterparts yesterday presented a surprisingly unified assessment of Bush’s vision for Middle East peace, seeking to quash pessimism brought about by deep rifts over the plan.

Despite sharp differences between them on the future of Arafat and the pace of Israeli steps to reciprocate Palestinian reforms, the four ministers expressed satisfaction with the president’s three-year timetable for a Palestinian state.

"We are here on a journey," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said in Washington. "We are more encouraged by what we heard from the secretary today that this journey is going in the right direction."

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher agreed. "We leave here encouraged by what we heard from the secretary of the US commitment to an endgame that will be achieved in three years," Moasher said, standing along side Powell, Prince Saud and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher outside the State Department.

"The discussions were extremely fruitful," he said, adding that the Arabs had presented to Powell and would later give to Bush their ideas on creating at least a temporary Palestinian state by Jan. 2003. Powell described the talks as a "very productive discussion."

Powell said the new Palestinian finance and interior ministers, appointed by Arafat under international pressure for reform, were senior Palestinian figures with whom Washington could deal.