Israel buries dead and plans response

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon convened top Cabinet ministers today to discuss options after six Israelis, including three teenagers and a toddler, were killed in Palestinian attacks in two days.

But Israeli officials said they did not expect a dramatic change in Israel’s response - brief pinpoint incursions into West Bank towns.

An exception is Bethlehem, where Israeli forces conducted searches for a fourth day. Overnight, soldiers went into a suburb of Ramallah.

The Israelis lifted the curfew in Bethlehem for a few hours to allow residents to buy food. Defiant children rode their bicycles in front of the huge tanks.

The Palestinian leadership issued a statement denouncing the Israeli incursions, which take place almost nightly.

The statement, distributed by the Palestinian news agency Wafa, charged that Israeli forces are ‘‘continuing their aggression ... practising random arrests and humiliating the citizens and firing on residential areas, killing and wounding many civilians.’’

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the Security Cabinet, made up of senior ministers, agreed on military steps. He did not elaborate, but Raanan Gissin, a Sharon adviser, said Israel would pursue ‘‘the same policies,’’ warning that ‘‘if there is an escalation, we, too, will escalate the use of our means to defend the lives of our citizens.’’

In funerals around the country, Israelis buried victims of Palestinian attacks - a baby and her grandmother, killed by a suicide bomber in a Tel Aviv suburb Monday, a motorist shot dead in a West Bank ambush late Tuesday and three high school students shot by a Palestinian who infiltrated a Jewish settlement of Itamar near the city of Nablus a few hours later.

Though the Palestinian leadership has condemned attacks inside Israel, Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said that does not apply to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

‘‘The Palestinian people have the complete right to resist the Israeli occupation and settlements in our land,’’ he said.