Shfaram, Israel ? Weeping mourners on Friday attended the funerals of four Israeli Arab men and women gunned down by an AWOL Israeli soldier who had fled his army unit to protest Israel’s imminent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

The attack, which ended when the gunman was beaten to death by an angry mob, heightened tensions in an already volatile atmosphere ahead of the Gaza pullout, set to begin Aug. 17. It also spurred calls for harsher legal measures against those who tacitly or openly advocate violence to try to thwart the withdrawal.

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which swiftly denounced the attacker as a “bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist,” vowed Friday to carry out the pullout as planned. Twenty-one Jewish settlements in Gaza are to be evacuated and Israeli troops are to withdraw from the seaside territory. Four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank also will be dismantled.

“Disengagement stays right on track,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, using the Israeli term for the hand-over of Gaza. “We’re not going to let this fanatic steal the opportunity for peace that disengagement presents.”

The 19-year-old attacker, Eden Natan-Zada, opened fire on fellow passengers on Bus No. 165 at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday as it passed through the mainly Arab town of Shfaram in Israel’s northern Galilee region. He killed the driver and three passengers and wounded 22 other people before a male passenger jumped on him when he paused to reload his army-issued M-16 rifle.

Shfaram, a mixed Christian, Muslim and Druze town that is known to its 30,000 inhabitants as Shafa Amr, was plunged into mourning. Black banners fluttered from car antennas and were draped from the sides of buildings.

Two sisters in their early 20s, Hazar and Dina Turki, had been riding the bus together; on Friday they were buried together. Thousands of people joined in the Muslim funeral procession through hilly, sun-baked streets, some of them raising chants that declared the two young women to be martyrs. Many others simply wept.

Christian funerals were held for the other two victims, bus driver Michel Bahout and passenger Nader Habek, both in their 50s. Loud cries of grief arose when their caskets were brought into the town’s Lutheran church, which was packed with mourners.

“This attack shows extremism is on the rise, and it scares me,” said schoolteacher Nemeh Jiriyes, who knew all the victims and attended all the funerals. “I worry that there may be more such attacks until the disengagement ends.”