JERUSALEM Ñ Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is urging the military to stop Palestinian attacks on Israeli motorists in the West Bank.

Sharon met with both Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz as well as brigade commanders in the West Bank and urged the military to launch initiatives to stop the drive-by shootings and ambushes of Israeli motorists. Two Israelis were killed in the West Bank on Monday by Palestinian snipers.

On late Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen ambushed a convoy that contained a prominent Israeli rabbi near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Nobody was hurt.

The prime minister, however, is said to be meeting resistance from the military. Military sources said regional commanders are constantly being given conflicting orders and cannot plan operations that could be cancelled at a moment's notice.

The sources said Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer have repeatedly scuttled proposals by the military to stop Palestinian attacks.

Sharon is said to feel disappointed by the military. Aides said the prime minister, a former commando chief, wants the military to launch initiatives that take into account the current ban on incursions into Palestinian-controlled territory in the West Bank.

"The military faces a difficult and challenging task," Israeli National Security Council chief Uzi Dayan said.

The prime minister is said to be under pressure from Jewish settlers and their supporters in the Cabinet to launch an attack on the PA. Government sources said PA Chairman Yasser Arafat has ordered attacks on Jewish settlers as Islamic groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Lebanese Hizbullah are planning bombings and abductions.

On Wednesday, police sappers dismantled a pipe bomb and a mortar bomb in downtown Hadera in central Israel.

"The situation is very serious," Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said. The sources said Sharon wants to delay any change in Israel's policy of restraint until after the prime minister meets U.S. President George Bush next Tuesday in Washington. On Wednesday, the security cabinet approved a continuation of Sharon's policy of restraint.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian gunners have resumed mortar attacks on Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. At least five mortars landed in or around one settlement on Tuesday. Near the Egyptian border, Palestinians fired rocket-propelled grenades toward military positions. Nobody was hurt.

For their part, Palestinian sources said that Arafat, who meets Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday, is under heavy pressure from the United States and the European Union, to honor the ceasefire. They said Jewish settlers are attacking Palestinian pedestrians and an elderly woman was run over by an Israeli motorist near the West Bank city of Kalkilya on Tuesday. Earlier, two Israeli youths attacked two Palestinian workers at a gas station on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.

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