JERUSALEM: Hamas vowed to press its campaign of deadly attacks on Israelis aimed at protesting a new round of Middle East peace talks set to kick off in Washington on Thursday.
"The resistance operations will continue," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri following two shooting attacks on West Bank roads in 24 hours that killed four Israeli settlers and wounded two others.
Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian forces on Thursday scoured the occupied West Bank for the gunmen who wounded two Israelis in the second attack claimed by Hamas in 24 hours ahead of the start of peace talks.
An Israeli military official hailed the cooperation with the Palestinian security forces which he said was at its highest level since the 1993 Oslo accords launched the Middle East peace process.
The official, who asked not to be named, said Palestinian authorities were arresting hundreds of "terrorists" as the Israeli military set up flying checkpoints along main roads in the occupied territory.
The Hamas leadership in Gaza has claimed 550 of its members were arrested by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank, but Omar Abdelrazaq, a senior Hamas official in the West Bank, said the number was closer to 150.
He said there had been a wide campaign of arrests and "there are detainees the (Palestinian) Authority cannot hide."
"In Ramallah alone 32 people were arrested, and we are working on determining the exact number" for the rest of the territory, he added.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) denied on Wednesday that it had arrested any Hamas members in connection with the first of the two attacks, in which four settlers, including a pregnant woman, were killed in a drive-by shooting.
PA security spokesman Adnan al-Damiri said, however, that Hamas members were given "routine summons which the security services undertake to prevent any law-breaking."
The Western-backed PA and Hamas have been fiercely divided since the Islamist movement seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In the second attack near Ramallah late on Wednesday, the attackers fired shots from a vehicle at a car in which Israelis were traveling near the Jewish settlement of Rimonim, Israeli army radio said.
One of the Israelis was seriously hurt, it said.
In a statement issued in Gaza, Hamas’s military wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades claimed "responsibility for the heroic operation." It also claimed the earlier attack.
"The Ramallah operation is a message to those who promised the Zionists that the Hebron operation would not be repeated," it said.
The attacks were staged ahead of the new round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations being launched on Thursday in Washington in a high-stakes peace mission by US President Barack Obama.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who were in Washington for the talks, both condemned the latest attack as they appeared with Obama at the White House on Wednesday.
"I will not let the terrorists block our path to peace, but as as these events underscore once again, that peace must be anchored in security," Netanyahu said.
Abbas called for an end to the violence.
"We do not want at all that any blood be shed… one drop of blood on the part of Israelis and Palestinians," he said.
Furious settlers vowed to flout a moratorium on settlement construction in protest at the attack.
In a symbolic protest, settlers on Wednesday laid the foundations for a sports centre at the Adam settlement, north of Jerusalem.
The Israeli government, under US pressure, imposed a partial, 10-month moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements in November in a move aimed at promoting the peace talks.
The Palestinians say that a renewal of settlement activities after September 26, when the moratorium expires, would end the negotiations.
But Netanyahu has told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that there was "no change to the cabinet decision to end the (moratorium) at the end of September 2010," his office said.
