Efforts to bring the Israelis and Palestinians back together in peace talks have been dealt another setback. In separate attacks, a prominent Jewish settler and a Palestinian official have been killed by gunmen.

Binyamin Kahane was travelling with his wife and children through the West Bank en route to Jerusalem. As they passed a Palestinian village near Ramallah gunmen riddled their van with bullets killing Kahane and his wife and injuring five of their children. A sixth child was not in the vehicle during the attack.

Kahane was the son of the late rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of an extremist group which demanded all Arabs be expelled from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Binyamin Kahane

Meir Kahane was killed by an American Arab in New York in 1990.

The younger Kahane, 34, continued to promote his father's extreme views and had been jailed several times for his anti-Arab activities.

It's not clear whether he was specifically targeted. Palestinian gunmen have been terrorizing Jews living on occupied land for the last several months.

This protester called Barak a traitor

Groups representing Jewish settlers immediately blamed Kahane's murder on Prime Minster Ehud Barak, saying they were paying the price for his campaign to secure a peace deal with the Palestinians.

In a statement faxed to an international news agency in Beirut, a group calling itself the Martyrs of the al-Aqsa Intifada claimed responsibility.

A Fatah activist is killed hours later

In what may have been a revenge attack just hours later, a prominent Palestinian official was shot dead outside his home in the West Bank city of Tulkarm.

Thabet Thabet was a local political activist in Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. He was not a militant, but a dentist who worked for the Palestinian Health Ministry. The Palestinian side claims he was assassinated by Israeli secret police.

Commenting on the incidents, Barak said, "No violence against Israeli civilians will shatter our strength or be rewarded, and the murderers will not escape punishment."

Barak called Kahane's shooting "a grave incident." He also said if Palestinians don't accept the latest U.S. peace proposals, Israel will take what he called a "time-out" from the peace process.