OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 22 October — Israeli forces besieged six Palestinian towns yesterday after their biggest military push into the West Bank left four more Palestinians dead and at least 19 injured. Shock waves from the move sent tremors through both the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s own coalition government.

In another development, the Palestinian Authority yesterday outlawed the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which claimed responsibility for the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

Israeli ground forces, supported by combat helicopters, surrounded and penetrated the towns of Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Qalqilya and Tulkarem.

Israeli Army officer Gen. Ron Kitrey said the Israeli armor would stay in the re-occupied land “as long as it takes” for the Palestinian Authority to crack down on extremist groups opposed to the latest cease-fire.

Israel said its extensive military incursion into Palestinian self-rule zones led to the arrest or killing of 20 people.

Israeli forces last night also destroyed a three-story building of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Force-17 bodyguard unit in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Palestinian witnesses said.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo charged that the military incursions — the biggest since the start of the Palestinian uprising 13 months ago — were aimed not at retaliation or choking “terror attacks” but at burying the enfeebled peace process.

Abed Rabbo said Sharon’s real aim, however, was to permanently re-occupy strategic Palestinian land and scuttle the peace process.

He said the former general was afraid of a possible US peace initiative based on UN Security Council resolutions for Israel to pull out of Palestinian land it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israel war, including Jerusalem.

“This is a nightmare for him. He wants to do all he can to avoid this,” Abed Rabbo said.

The heaviest fighting was in the Al Izza refugee camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where police major, Mahed Hussein Al Juju, aged 49, and Mahmud Suleiman Baraka, 32, were killed by Israeli forces.

A third Palestinian, Issa Fawzi, a 28-year-old officer with the Palestinian intelligence service, was killed in clashes in Beit Jala while a Palestinian girl, Ghada Aysha, 18, from the village of Sanur, was the fourth victim. Another 12 people were injured in the fighting in the refugee camp, while five more were hurt in the northern towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarem.

And in Ramallah, two Palestinian police officers were hurt, one of them seriously, officials said. The head of the West Bank hospital service, Mussa Abu Khmeid, said 147 Palestinians had been wounded in the sudden explosion of violence.

He described the past days as the “most difficult time in the uprising,” saying 24-hour curfews in areas re-occupied by Israel had stopped medical supplies and doctors from getting where they were needed.

In another development, Israel’s centrist Labor party threatened to quit Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s coalition government yesterday if Israeli tanks maintain their stranglehold on autonomous Palestinian territory, Israeli radio reported. The threat was made in a weekly Cabinet meeting.

A senior State Department official said US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke by telephone with a series of key figures involved with the Middle East conflict yesterday.

Powell discussed the Middle East not only with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, but also with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Jordan’s King Abdallah, the official told reporters.

In Damascus, the EU envoy to the Middle East, Miguel Angel Moratinos, said the European Union wants a withdrawal from the autonomous Palestinian territories re-occupied by the Israeli Army since Thursday.

“We will do what we can to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and allow the Israeli Army to redeploy out of Zone A,” or sectors under full Palestinian control, Moratinos said.

Qatar called yesterday for an urgent UN Security Council session to end “Israeli aggression” against the Palestinians, the QNA news agency said.