Jerrold Kessel: More Mideast bloodshed

Jerrold Kessel

(CNN) -- Violence and conflict continued to spiral upward this weekend in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. CNN's Jerrold Kessel reported from Jerusalem on the escalating bloodshed.

JERROLD KESSEL: Deadly attack after deadly attack. The most deadly of the morning has been in a remote road of the West Bank at a military checkpoint, where a Palestinian gunman, possibly only one gunman with a sniper rifle, attacked the soldiers manning that checkpoint and a convoy of civilian cars were traveling through that checkpoint.

Ten Israelis were killed in that attack, and the gunman made his way back to the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Another four Israelis were wounded there. Most of the casualties were the soldiers manning that checkpoint, but also some civilians were among the fatalities and the wounded there.

And there was another attack at a military checkpoint on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Another Israeli was killed there and four wounded.

And all this is coming just 12 hours after a deadly suicide bombing in the heart of Jerusalem. A 19-year-old Palestinian from a refugee camp near Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, blew himself up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem as people were exiting from a synagogue at the end of the Jewish Sabbath, marking a bar mitzvah of two boys there.

Among the nine Israelis killed, several were small children, including a couple of toddlers and a mother and her 3-year-old son among the fatalities. Also, of the 50 or so people who were wounded in that suicide bombing, more than 20 remain in hospitals and several reportedly are still in critical condition.

Within hours of this attack this morning, Israeli helicopters and tanks have been attacking Palestinian posts on the West Bank, just like helicopters attacked last night after that suicide bombing. In the town of Bethlehem, a major Palestinian police post was struck there and also, what the Israelis described as a bomb factory. No casualties were reported there, but in this morning's Israeli attack, one Palestinian was being reported killed and some 15 wounded in Ramallah.

The Palestinian Authority had condemned that suicide bombing in Jerusalem, but while the Palestinian Authority took that position, many Palestinians were exulting, because Palestinians had been outraged and Palestinian troops had been vowing revenge before an Israeli military incursion into two refugee camps in the West Bank.

More than 20 Palestinians were killed during days of fighting there as Israeli troops engaged a gunman in those camps. The Israelis said they've gone into the camps because the Palestinian militants have been able to operate out there at will. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed in that three-day operation.

The Israeli Cabinet of Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon is now pondering what to do next. Mr. Sharon will be convening his Security Cabinet at 8:30 this evening local time ... with two very serious questions to ponder ... whether there is in fact an indelible link between Israeli military incursions and these Palestinian attacks today and beyond that, perhaps even a bigger question -- whether Israel should change its strategy toward Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.