Islamic extremists in Gaza and the West Bank are threatening to "create an earthquake under the Zionists' feet" to avenge the killings by an Israeli army commando unit of two leaders of the Hamas military wing. Israel, clearly alarmed by the threat, yesterday sealed off Gaza and the West Bank.
Two brothers, Adel and Imad Awadallah, were shot dead on Thursday evening in a village outside Hebron, in an Israeli-controlled sector of the West Bank, in what Israeli military officials described as "a gun battle".
Adel Awadallah is said by Israel to have been the commander of the Hamas military wing, Izzedin alQassam, which has carried out a series of suicide attacks on Israeli targets in recent years.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Hamas group, led a demonstration in Gaza City yesterday calling for revenge. There were angry protests, too, in al-Birah, home town of the Awadallah family, and elsewhere in the West Bank.
When Israel assassinated a previous Hamas military leader, Yihya Ayash, in 1996, the group hit back with four suicide bombings in the space of eight days; a campaign of killing that helped to bring the hardline government of Mr Benjamin Netanyahu to power in Israel.
The Israeli army said the brothers had been hiding out in a house in the village of Taibeh, and that soldiers had been alerted to their presence because gun-shots were heard there several days ago. The Israelis apparently did not know who it was that they were staking out, until they examined the bodies after Thursday's gun battle. The Defence Minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, claimed that the Awadallahs had been planning an attack against Israel.
The tension caused by the killings is exacerbating the complexities surrounding the current talks here of the US Middle East envoy, Mr Dennis Ross. Mr Ross yesterday met Palestinian officials and Mr Netanyahu.