Jerusalem ? Peace talks between Israel and Palestinians were on hold after a Hamas suicide attacker killed seven Israeli bus passengers Sunday, a bombing that endangered a U.S.-backed peace plan before it got off the ground.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon indefinitely postponed a Washington trip seen as crucial for launching the “road map” plan, and instead convened his Cabinet to weigh a response to the bombing that also wounded 20 passengers.

At a four-hour Cabinet meeting Sunday, several ministers renewed calls for Yasser Arafat’s expulsion, but Sharon said Israel was better off not having the Palestinian leader tour world capitals. For more than a year, Arafat has been confined to the West Bank town of Ramallah by Israel.

Israel “will continue to fight terror everywhere, at any time and in any way possible,” the Cabinet said in a statement.

In a routine response, the Israeli military sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a step that meant little because Palestinians already are subject to stringent travel bans.

A senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that foreign diplomats who declared their intention to meet Arafat would not be received by Israeli officials, an attempt to further isolate the Palestinian leader.

Sunday’s bus blast was one of four Palestinian attacks within 11 hours, apparently aimed at derailing the peace plan. The three suicide bombings and a shooting left nine Israeli civilians and five Palestinian assailants dead.

The attacks were timed to coincide with the first Israeli-Palestinian summit since 2000, held late Saturday between Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.

In other incidents Sunday:

• Fifteen Palestinians wanted by Israel, including those involved in the killing of a Jewish settler in a shooting ambush last week, left Arafat’s Ramallah compound, in line with an Israeli demand that the Palestinian leader stop giving them refuge, according to Palestinian officials, among them the governor of Ramallah.

Officials said Arafat agreed to remove the men from his compound because he wanted to avoid giving Israel a pretext for a renewed attack on his headquarters.

• In the Gaza Strip, two Palestinians, ages 18 and 13, were killed by Israeli army fire, doctors said. The 13-year-old was among several dozen youngsters throwing stones at Israeli troops patrolling a Gaza town they seized last week.
• In the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian militiamen dragged a suspected informer into a main square and killed him with several shots to the head, witnesses said.
• A gas canister accidentally exploded in downtown Tel Aviv, wounding 20 people. The canister fell as it was being unloaded from a truck outside an Asian noodle bar.