Palestinian Van Driver Kills 2 Israelis in West Bank, Igniting Settlers’ Rampage : Mideast: The latest in a series of suspected terrorist attacks raises tensions in the occupied territories.

A Palestinian driving a delivery van struck and killed two Israelis on Monday near the Jewish settlement of Eli in the occupied West Bank in what security officials concluded was “probably a terrorist attack,” the latest in a series in which at least a dozen Israelis have died this year.

Israeli settlers, their anger rising rapidly over what they see as a murderous new offensive against them, stoned Palestinian motorists and rampaged through nearby Palestinian towns. They broke windows and fired in all directions, retaliating for the men’s deaths before troops dispersed them.

Later, about 500 settlers brought their protest to central Jerusalem, scuffling with police for more than an hour, burning tires outside Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s official residence and shouting, “Death to Arabs!”

“My hands are still covered with blood, and I am still shaking because I stand at that junction at least three times a week,” Nitza Shemish, a nurse living in Eli, said after trying to save the two men. “It’s painful to think that this could happen to any one of us and that we’ve been abandoned.”

Elsewhere on Monday, a member of the Druze Arab minority was shot and seriously wounded in the Golan Heights by an Israeli settler who said he mistook him for a terrorist; a new Jewish immigrant from New York was stabbed by an Arab youth in the northern town of Afula, and an Israeli was slashed on the arm and hand by a knife-wielding Arab in Bet Shemesh, west of Jerusalem.

Three opposition parties introduced resolutions calling on Rabin to resign, asserting that he has failed to preserve the country’s security and that his conciliatory stance in negotiations with Israel’s Arab neighbors is encouraging terrorism.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, comparing the current violence to the start five years ago of the intifada, the Palestinian rebellion against Israeli occupation, said: “We have a wave of knifings--and it is a very painful wave--but I am certain we will find ways to deal with it.

“But it will take some time, especially as we have no proof these knife-wielders have a ‘general staff’ or a group that is organizing them.”

Police Minister Moshe Shahal put his personnel on 12-hour shifts, canceled all leaves and brought retirees back to duty to increase security at sensitive points.

But Yehoshua Matza, chairman of the Interior Affairs Committee of the Knesset, the country’s Parliament, called for still tougher measures.

“There has to be a clear declaration that any terrorist or anyone coming to perpetrate a terrorist action will not get out of it alive,” Matza said.

Although security officials left open the possibility of an accident in the hit-and-run deaths of Ofer Cohen, 25, and Yaakov Bracha, 28, at Eli, witnesses among the settlers described it as deliberate.

“I saw the driver of the Arab vehicle purposely murder the two men,” Michael Resnikov said. “They were walking along the shoulder of the highway and were in a well-protected place. (The driver) swerved onto the shoulder by several meters to kill them. One he threw 10 or 12 meters in the air, the other he dragged a good distance before braking hard to throw him off.”

Police and soldiers were still searching Monday night for the driver, Samir Hamdallah Tammam, 22, of the West Bank city of Nablus. He abandoned the van in a nearby village after Resnikov and other Eli residents gave chase.

Palestinian sources discounted the possibility of a terrorist attack, describing it as an accident. Tammam has no political affiliation, they said, and comes from a traditional family with extensive business interests. The van was filled with sacks of sesame seeds that Tammam was taking to his father’s warehouse.

Saul Haber, 21, the immigrant from New York, had arrived only two weeks ago and was on his way to a government office in Afula to register when he stopped to buy a candy bar--and was stabbed in the back by a Palestinian from Nablus.

Three bystanders, including a Knesset member, chased and caught Haber’s assailant--and then had to protect him from the angry crowd who started to beat him with pipes and iron bars.

Rafik Shams, 20, the Druze villager wounded at Katzrin in the Golan Heights, was coming to work in the town’s industrial park with a friend, according to police, when Zvi Schwartz, 57, saw them and opened fire. Schwartz later shot a woman motorist, another Israeli settler, before he was arrested.

Although police suggested that Schwartz was deranged and drunk, they acknowledged with some embarrassment that he had a gun license. On Friday, Yaakov Terner, police inspector general, had urged all Israelis with gun licenses to carry their weapons at all times to deter terrorist attacks.