But on Monday night, a powerful explosion tore apart an Israeli home near the West Bank, and the police were investigating the incident early today as a possible suicide bombing. Investigators found two bodies in the rubble, one of a woman and the other of a young man, the police said.

"They're not saying it's a terrorist attack," said Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman. "They're checking all possibilities." The blast occurred in the village of Kfar Yavetz, in central Israel.

The woman was identified as a 65-year-old resident of the village, but the man, whose body was said to have been mangled, was not immediately identified.

If the blast was a suicide bombing, it would be the first such attack since the leading Palestinian factions — Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the mainstream Fatah movement — announced on June 29 that they were suspending their violence for at least three months.

The explosion occurred near Palestinian areas of the northern West Bank where Palestinian security forces have not yet assumed policing responsibility from Israel. But the Palestinian cease-fire was supposed to apply to all violence against Israelis. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.

Last week, Israel withdrew its forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and from most of Bethlehem, in the southern West Bank, returning security control to Palestinian forces there. Israel says it will not pull back from any more Palestinian cities until it sees Palestinian officers take action to break up militant groups and collect their weapons.

Israeli officials have largely dismissed the cease-fire as a ploy to blunt their military operations and permit terrorists to re-arm. 

Palestinian security officials in Gaza said Monday that they had released nine militants from a group known as the Popular Resistance Committees. The men were being held on charges that they took part in firing grenades at Israeli settlements in Gaza in recent days. They were freed after the group said it would abide by the factions' decision to suspend attacks.

In their meetings on Monday, Palestinian ministers warned their Israeli counterparts that a planned Israeli prisoner release, announced Sunday, was too small to achieve its stated purpose of generating political support for the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, and the peace effort. They proposed having Mr. Abbas visit members of Israel's Parliament to make his case directly to them.

The Israeli government, though deeply divided on the matter, narrowly decided Sunday to release some 300 of more than 5,000 Palestinian prisoners. It said that it would give priority to women and to prisoners under 18 and over 60, but that it would free no one involved in attacking Israelis.

Hisham Abdul Razeq, the Palestinian minister of prisoners affairs and a former prisoner of Israel, met on Monday with Yosef Lapid, the Israeli justice minister. Afterward, Mr. Abdul Razeq told reporters that if Israel did not revise its decision, "it will affect the peace process for the worse." He said the only way to strengthen the truce was to release prisoners from all Palestinian factions.

Hamas leaders said they would consider a refusal by Israel to release all its prisoners to be a violation of the temporary cease-fire. Israel was not a party to that agreement.

The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is under sharp attack from victims' families and the Israeli political right for releasing prisoners. It had freed about 300 under a previous initiative.

Mr. Lapid said the Palestinians needed to fulfill their own obligations, not just make demands. But he called the meeting "a very promising beginning," and said the two sides had agreed to set up committees to discuss "the legal problems shared" by Israel and the governing Palestinian Authority.

Official contacts at all levels were all but severed during the 33-month conflict.

Also Monday, the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, met here with Nabil Amr, the Palestinian minister of information, for the first session of a joint committee on "prevention of incitement," which is focusing on messages in the schools and news media encouraging violence.

Mr. Shalom said he was pleased recently to note "a measure of positive change in the degree of anti-Israel incitement and hatred." In Gaza City, workers on Monday continued to spread whitewash over graffiti extolling violent groups and their deeds. 

Israeli forces continued to operate in areas where Israel has not yet ceded policing responsibility. On Monday, troops arrested 15 Palestinians in the West Bank, including one man described by Israel as a senior operative of Islamic Jihad in the area of Jenin, in the north. 

Near the Palestinian town of Qalqilya, a few miles from the site of the explosion Monday night, a gunman opened fire Monday morning on a construction crew building an Israeli barrier fence against West Bank Palestinians, the Israeli Army said. Shortly afterward, a bomb was detonated nearby, the army said. No one was reported wounded in either incident.

Palestinian security officials gave conflicting accounts on Monday of what some said was the arrest of a would-be suicide bomber. Officials of National Security, one of several overlapping Palestinian security organizations, said they had arrested an 18-year-old woman who was planning a suicide attack after her family found a letter she had left that described her intentions.

They said they caught her near the Karni crossing between the Gaza Strip, which is fenced, and Israel. 

But a senior official with the Palestinian Preventive Security, another organization, said the young woman had left behind a note describing her troubles with her family and had then run off. Her family notified the police, he said.

"We found her crying," the official said. "She was sitting there and crying."

He said security officers had questioned the woman, who was not carrying an explosive, and then released her.

The Palestinian security forces remain divided, with some, like National Security, reporting directly to Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and others, like Preventive Security, reporting to Muhammad Dahlan, Mr. Abbas's minister of security. It is possible that different branches are competing for credit, playing up their own accomplishments or playing down those of others.