Jewish settlers have rampaged through a Palestinian village in the West Bank today after Palestinian stone-throwers seriously hurt a Jewish baby.
The rampage by settlers from the Shilo area, in the heart of the mainly Palestinian West Bank, followed an incident in which a five-month-old Jewish baby was hit by stones thrown by Palestinians near Shilo late on Tuesday.
Armed settlers burned three Arab homes and a vegetable hothouse to the ground in the village of Al-Sawia and raised an Israeli flag over another house, villagers and Palestinian officials said. Police said they had arrested two settlers.
Despite the attack, Israel said the ceasefire promised by Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat four days ago was starting to take hold and that it would resume food and fuel supplies to the Palestinians that were suspended at the weekend.
Arafat's pledge followed Israeli threats of retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed 21 people at a Tel Aviv nightclub last Friday. Israeli forces say they have already introduced their own limited ceasefire.
Encouraged by the lull in eight months of fighting, the United States said it was sending CIA chief Mr George Tenet to the region. He has mediated between the Palestinians and Israel before and was expected to arrive on Thursday.
But the ceasefire depends on militant Palestinian groups halting bomb attacks, and the Palestinans say it will hold only if they are offered some political gains from the uprising they began against Israeli occupation in late September.
The militant Islamic group Hamas, which has carried out a series of bomb attacks and suicide bombings in the last few years, says it will continue to attack Israelis "everywhere".
An interview for a Russian television channel in which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Mr Arafat a "murderer and pathological liar" also kept passions high.
Israeli Defence Minister Mr Binyamin Ben-Eliezer announced food and fuel supplies would begin flowing again from Israel to the West Bank and Gaza on Wednesday morning.
Ben-Eliezer said he decided to lift the ban as a result of "a significant drop in the level of violence in the past few days" - a reduction he called "a step in the right direction".