SENIOR ISRAELI OFFICIALS apologized for the loss of civilian lives, while Palestinians and some Israelis charged the army has lost its sense of restraint in its drive to crush the Palestinian uprising.
       “Our hearts are full of sorrow,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. He called the civilian deaths “very regrettable” and said he was sure military officials “will take every necessary step to prevent it from happening again.”
       The army said the four Palestinians killed Sunday were trying to cut through a fence near the settlement of Kiryat Arba, outside Hebron. It said its soldiers had been warned that four Palestinians would attempt an attack in the area and opened fire when they saw the men. The four were killed near the settlement’s vineyard, settlers and Palestinian witnesses said.
But Palestinian witnesses said the men were laborers in a nearby stone quarry who were shot without provocation.
       Mohammed Manassa, a Palestinian who lives in the area, said he saw Israeli soldiers taking the men from the quarry and leading them down a hill. “I heard shooting from about 200 meters (yards) away. I heard screams of pain and then it became quiet,” Manassa said.

MILITARY GETS SCRUTINY 
The military operations are part of an Israeli campaign against militants after Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel that have killed hundreds. Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a cycle of attacks and counterattacks that began in September 2000.
       Israel has said the loss of civilian life is an unintended consequence of its campaign to stop suicide bombings. But some are asking if there has been a change in military policy giving soldiers more leeway when deciding whether to shoot.
       Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo called for an end to recent talks with the Israelis that have included a tentative agreement envisioning Israeli pullbacks in the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for Palestinian assurances against terror.
       “After each meeting with the Israelis a new massacre happens somewhere in the Palestinian territories,” he said.
       Also Sunday, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian gunman in the West Bank town of Jenin in a fierce gunbattle, the army and members of the militant Islamic Jihad said. Abdel Kareem Sadi, 16, the son of Bassam Sadi, the group’s Jenin district leader, was shot in the back, Islamic Jihad sources said. Two other gunmen were wounded in the fighting that erupted when troops entered a refugee camp early in the morning.

‘WE ARE NOT TRIGGER-HAPPY’
       In the West Bank town of Tubas on Saturday, an Israeli helicopter fired three missiles at a car, apparently targeting two militants from the Al-Aqsa Brigades, a militia affiliated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. The attack killed one of the militants, as well as two teens in the car and a 10-year-old boy and 6-year-old boy walking nearby. Another militant in the car was wounded as were six bystanders. 

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called the strike a “brutal act of murder.”
       Later Saturday, a Palestinian gunman infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha in the West Bank and wounded two Israelis, including a 23-year-old pregnant woman, before being shot dead.
The weekend violence came after Israeli tank fire killed four Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip on Thursday — a mother, her two sons and an uncle.
       Speaking at a ceremony at the foreign ministry, Foreign Minister Peres insisted, “We are not trigger-happy.”
       But Haim Ramon, a lawmaker from Peres’ center-left Labor party, said he wants to know if there has been a change in the army’s rules of engagement “in the direction of leniency toward the finger that squeezed the trigger.”
       
PAUSE IN BOMBINGS
Ramon said the killing of innocent people threatens Israeli security because it “damages our international standing” and “brings into the cycle of terrorism more people who did not previously intend to join it.”
       Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has made it clear he intends to use military means to stop attacks on Israelis. But he heads a national unity government comprising parties from both the left and right, and his defense minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, has been speaking to the Palestinians about Israeli pullbacks.
       After suicide attacks over the summer, the Israeli army reoccupied much of the West Bank and parts of the Gaza Strip — imposing severe restrictions that have further devastated the Palestinian economy and confined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to their homes for days at a time.
       Israeli newspaper columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily that the tentative contacts with the Palestinians should be given a chance to bear fruit.
       “What is the use of heating things up by means of proactive military operations?” he wrote. “The Palestinians will respond with a wave of terror attacks.”
       There have been no suicide bombings in Israel since Aug. 4.