Tel Aviv, July 19: Israeli plans to ease a military crackdown in the West Bank were on hold on Thursday after a double Palestinian suicide bombing killed three people in Tel Aviv, the Defence Ministry said. The attacks less than a minute apart on Wednesday followed a Palestinian bus ambush which killed seven Israelis near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday, shattering a month of relative calm and undermining hopes of reviving peacemaking.

Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's office said plans had been drawn up to lift some of the restrictions imposed on Palestinian civilians since the army reoccupied seven West Bank cities last month but that they had now been frozen.
Bureau Report