The demonstrators operating in groups of several dozen people, blocked traffic with their vehicles or by heaping stones on the road, then held prayer sessions, the police said. Israeli police intervened several times to make arrests and allow traffic to go through.

``Thirty-one crossroads have been blocked on Sunday in Judea-Samaria (West Bank) and police have arrested 17 people,'' Jewish settler leader Aharon Domb told mediapersons.

Earlier, on Saturday, United States President Bill Clinton appealed for Israelis to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Wye River memorandum he signed with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. ``We are not out of the woods yet, the agreement still has to be implemented,'' Clinton said during a two-day fund-raising and campaign trip to the West Coast.

``And I hope inIsrael the people and the members of his political coalition will support ... Netanyahu, who took significant risks given the nature of his political support to sign (the) agreement,'' he told wealthy Democratic party contributors in Beverly Hills.

Clinton downplayed his own role in the accord, reached after nine days of intense negotiating at the Wye River conference centre outside Washington in Maryland.

``I don't need any applause,'' he said. ``It was my obligation and it was an honour and it was a joy, even the meanest and toughest parts of it.''Meanwhile, in Gaza City, the Union of Palestinian journalists called a strike on Saturday to protest the arrests of Palestinian journalists at the home of HAMAS founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Palestinian police arrested 10 Palestinian journalists and a foreign reporter Friday night who were covering Yassin's reaction to the White House signing ceremony of a new Israeli-Palestinian interim peace agreement.

Sheikh Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder ofthe Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), has condemned the Wye River agreement and said HAMAS would continue its armed struggle against Israel.

The arrests appeared to be a first sign that the Palestinian Authority is trying to implement the Wye River accord by limiting news media coverage of HAMAS. In a statement received by AFP in Cairo, Sheikh Yassin denounced what he called ``the muzzling of the press''.