ISRAEL yesterday widened its reoccupation of the West Bank amid wide public backing for drastic measures against the Palestinians.

As Israeli troops took over the town of Qalqiliya, the defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, threw his weight behind the idea of deporting families of suicide bombers as a deterrent to attacks against Israelis.

In addition to Qalqiliya, where they imposed a curfew, Israeli forces now control the West Bank towns of Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, and the outskirts of Ramallah.

The new offensive, Operation Adamant Way, for which reservists began to be called up yesterday, marks Israel’s response to two suicide bombings in Jerusalem in which 26 people died.

The bombings and the killings of four people, including two children and their mother, at the Jewish settlement of Itamar on Thursday have angered the country into backing yet another major operation. Israeli troops are reported to be keeping at least 400,000 Palestinians under effective house arrest while barring the media from covering an operation that has faced minimal resistance and limited international criticism. It comes less than two months after Operation Defensive Shield, which was supposed to destroy "terrorist infrastructure". It saw a temporary fall in attacks.

The reservists’ service promises to be protracted this time, with even cabinet ministers unable to estimate when the offensive will end. The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, as defence minister, oversaw the push into Lebanon in 1982 which was supposed to last 48 hours. It lasted 18 years.

Asked if the troops would stay on permanently in the West Bank, the industry minister, Dalia Itzik, from the Labour Party, said: "Every week at the cabinet meeting we will ask, where is this operation going?

We have hands to raise and we have influence." He was sure that Mr Sharon did not want permanent reoccupation.

During the 1980s Israel deported brothers and fathers of people blamed for attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. Mr Ben-Eliezer’s plan, however, marks the first time entire families would be expelled, said Shmuel Goren, former head of the military administration in the West Bank.

"We cannot allow a situation where families of bombers think that the day of a bombing is a day of celebration," said Yarden Vatikai, the spokesman for Mr Ben-Eliezer. Mr Vatikai said that bombers "should think twice," knowing their families would be deported.

The legal implications of expelling families are still being worked through. But the measure would be unlikely to face much opposition in Israel where citizens repeatedly see television footage of relatives expressing satisfaction and pride over bombings.

Amnon Dankner, editor of Maariv newspaper last week wrote in an editorial that the Palestinians were "a suicide society".

He said that because of broad public support for the bombings, every Palestinian was responsible for them.

During the military operations, Mr Dankner wrote to Palestinians: "It seems that our soldiers will pay with their lives in order not to carry out mass killings, but to isolate the terrorists in an effort to hit them only."

But if innocent Palestinians were killed, he said, "the blood of all the injured will be on all your hands, because you are all guilty as a society".

A Palestinian legislator, Salah Tamari, called deporting families "an illegal, unlawful and inhuman measure. Why should somebody be accountable for someone else’s actions?

"The Israelis are standing on their heads and seeing the world upside down. They need to stand on their feet and see the reality: their ugly occupation triggers resistance."

Israel’s supreme court has usually upheld deportations, rooted in emergency provisions that were enacted by Britain when it ruled Palestine under a UN mandate.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel yesterday warned that deportations would violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. It said that harming families "blurs the boundaries between a democratic state that is obliged to law and human rights and the terrorist organisations".