Does surge of violence portend a Mideast war?

At least that's how Israeli opposition leader Yossi Sarid this week described events that could trigger an all-out war. He warned that a war could start even though no one intends or wishes it to happen.

What gave Sarid pause was the sudden escalation this week in the conflict between Israeli and the Palestinians, including:

*Israel's incursion into the Christian town of Beit Jala in response to sustained firing on the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo.

*Israel's foray into the Egyptian border town Rafah in response to deadly Palestinian attacks launched from Gaza.

*The killing of Mustafa Zabri, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who died in a pinpoint Israeli missile strike Monday on his office in Ramallah.

Zabri -- better known as Abu Ali Mustafa -- was the highest-ranking figure killed in Israel's policy of targeting terrorist leaders. He was the leader of a hard-line PLO faction that continued to reject a negotiated settlement with Israel.

Zabri's political standing sets him apart from other victims of Israel's targeted killings, and led Israeli pundits to dissect Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's strategy.

While some questioned the wisdom of the move, others noted that Sharon had sent a message to the Palestinians that anyone who masterminds terror attacks on Israel is not safe from the Israel Defense Force.

"Too many people have become used to a situation in which the senior Palestinian statesmen of terror sit safely in their offices while those whom they dispatch kill and are killed," the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot wrote in an editorial. "These statesmen of terror see themselves as immune from any Israeli retaliation and punishment. The IDF's action made it clear to them that this is not the case."

The remnants of the Israeli peace camp, however, harshly attacked the move.

Labor Party politician Yossi Beilin called Sharon "a Nero burning himself and Rome while he plays the fiddle," telling the Israeli daily Ha'aretz that "Sharon is escalating the conflict with no strategy to end it."

Beilin called on Labor to withdraw from the unity government.

Saleh Tarif, the first Arab to serve as an Israeli cabinet minister, said that "the distance from the assassination" of Zabri "to the assassination of [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat is very small."

Sharon sought to stop such speculation in its tracks, however, as his Inner Security Cabinet decided Monday that Israel would not take out Palestinian elected officials -- a signal that Arafat was not a target.

Escalation continued Monday night, when Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled into the Christian town of Beit Jala after Palestinian gunmen had raked the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo with fire for hours, injuring one Israeli.

The move made good on Israel's warning several weeks ago, after a particularly vigorous day of Palestinian shooting on Gilo, that Israel would no longer allow a residential neighborhood of its capital to be turned into a shooting gallery.

Unlike in previous incursions into Palestinian-controlled territory, however, the troops seized several buildings overlooking Gilo and dug in.

Taken together, the two Israeli actions were considered a significant escalation by many observers, and certainly by the international community.

On Tuesday, for instance, the United States called on Israel to withdraw from Beit Jala.

Noting that Israeli troops had taken up positions next to a Beit Jala orphanage affiliated with the Lutheran church, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called Tuesday on both sides "to avoid any action that would jeopardize the safety of the children."

The next day, there was the possibility that the Gilo-Beit Jala crisis might be defused.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced Wednesday that Israel and the Palestinian Authority had reached a cease-fire agreement covering Gilo and Beit Jala. He made the announcement after speaking by phone with Arafat.

However, camouflaged Palestinians continued to fire heavily from rooftops on Gilo following the declaration.

Sharon's spokesman, Ra'anan Gissin, said the pullout would take place only "if there is a cessation of all forms of shooting toward Jerusalem," making a withdrawal on Wednesday appear unlikely.

According to sources, Sharon was to confer with senior cabinet ministers on a pullback late Wednesday.

Earlier that day, Palestinians fired at least two mortar bombs at Gilo. Israeli police said one of the mortars slammed into a roof of an apartment building, wrecking solar water heaters but causing no injuries. The other exploded in an empty field.

And on Tuesday evening, Palestinians fired a mortar into the center of Gilo, hitting a community center.

Also on Wednesday, Israeli tanks and bulldozers seized a main road to seal off Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. During the operation, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian policeman who was believed to work also for a militant group. Israel seized the area after Palestinian gunmen repeatedly fired on nearby army positions.

The slaying of Zabri on Monday was particularly unnerving to the Palestinian leadership because there previously had been an unspoken understanding that political figures on the Palestinian side were immune from assassination attempts. Zabri returned to Ramallah from Damascus in 1999 with Israel's tacit consent.

His killing immediately triggered two reactions that Israelis found troubling:

*PFLP spokesmen vowed to take revenge against Israelis and Israeli targets everywhere. Veteran observers here recalled the organization's spectacular attacks during the 1970s, on planes, embassies and airports around the world, as well as its more recent involvement in car bombings in Israeli cities.

*Other Palestinian militant groups, including the fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad, urged unity and joint action against Israel, despite the deep ideological differences between such groups and the Marxist-secular PFLP.

On the same night as Israel entered Beit Jala, IDF tanks were active inside Rafah, leaving after they flattened several buildings used by Palestinian gunmen to shoot at Israeli troops.

The IDF's actions came after a series of grave incidents over the weekend.

Early Saturday morning, two Palestinian gunmen shot their way into an IDF post in the Gaza Strip and killed a major and two soldiers. Seven other Israeli soldiers were wounded before one of the gunmen was shot dead. The other escaped, but was hunted down later.

The incident and its consequences severely shook the nation. "This shows daring on the part of the Palestinians," an IDF general admitted. "We would not expect this sort of outcome in face-to-face fighting."

But there was hardly time to grieve or to ponder.

That same night, a family of five was ambushed on the highway from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The parents, Sharon and Yaniv Ben-Shalom, and the mother's young brother, Doron Sabari, were killed. The Ben-Shaloms' two baby girls survived with light injuries.

The next day, a Netanya businessman, Dov Rosman, was shot dead as he did some business with a Palestinian just inside the West Bank near Tulkarm.

On Monday, a father of five, Meir Linksberg of the West Bank settlement of Itamar, was shot dead while driving on a road in the West Bank.

On Tuesday, Israeli police arrested what they said was a three-man cell on its way to carry out a terror attack in the Negev city of Beersheva.

On Wednesday there was yet more bloodshed when an Israeli truck driver was shot and killed at close range in a terrorist attack near the West Bank city of Nablus. Oleg Sotnikov, 35, of Ashdod, was driving a fuel truck unescorted Wednesday on an iso