A curfew had earlier been imposed on the city, and the adjacent towns of Beitunia and Al-Bireh but was later lifted, the army said.

However, all roads leading to Ramallah were closed, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Ramallah is only five kilometers (three miles) from the French Hill neighborhood in annexed east Jerusalem where the deadly bombing took place and houses the offices of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas and the Palestinian Parliament.

There was no immediate claim for the twin Jerusalem bombings, but Palestinian resistance leaders said they are part of “self-defense” after Israeli occupation forces intensified their attacks against Palestinian-ruled areas.

Abdual Aziz al-Rantisi, a Hamas leader, told IslamOnline.net that “the double martyrdom operations came as self-defense”, noting that the Palestinian resistance will go non-stop as long as the Israeli occupation existed.

Asked whether the double blasts are linked to the meeting between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon, Rantisi said they have nothing to do with the meeting, given that such operations “cannot be carried out overnight and need some time for planning.”

On Saturday, May 17 , Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two armed Palestinians who had injured two Israelis after infiltrating the West Bank Jewish settlement of Shearei Tikwah near the demarcation line with Israel.

In the meanwhile, a spokesman for Sharon mulled the possibility of removing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom Sharon's office accused of being responsible for the double attack.

"Let me just refer you to an experiment that took place in Iraq a month ago -- what happened when a reign of terror by one leader was taken off, how the people reacted," Raanan Gissin told reporters.

"... When people say 'he's the leader and he's doing this' well, they haven't had the opportunity really to see what it means to live, or to behave or to act without Yasser Arafat calling the shots, literally," Gissin said.

Gissin stressed any hope for moving along the peace process rested not on the internationally-backed Middle East “roadmap”, which calls for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005, but in ousting Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority.

"The problem is not the roadmap, the problem is the trail of blood ... which has been charted very clearly by Yasser Arafat and those who support him," Gissin said.

Also Sunday, Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner had earlier blamed Arafat for the twin bombings, charging that the aging leader had formed an alliance with Muslim movements like Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a bid to sabotage peace efforts led the new Palestinian premier.

"It is in Yasser Arafat's interest to hamper his rival Abu Mazen, to prove he cannot govern, and for that purpose he has formed an alliance with Hamas and Jihad, in an attempt to stop the revival of the peace process with terrorist acts," Pazner charged.

"I do not yet know which measures will be taken but we will obviously have to take some to fight against this wave of terrorism," he said.