JERUSALEM — An Israeli police officer was shot dead in the West Bank on Monday and two more were wounded in the first fatal shooting attack on Israeli security personnel in the area in more than a year.

The West Bank has seen only sporadic violence in recent months, but tensions have risen in the region following Israel’s deadly raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza two weeks ago.

The attack was on a police vehicle driving in the Hebron area of the southern West Bank, according to a police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld. Three officers were wounded, and one, Yehoshua Sofer, 39, died in the hospital. No group had claimed responsibility by Monday evening, and no suspect had been arrested.

In February, an Israeli soldier was stabbed to death by a Palestinian police officer in the northern West Bank, and in March 2009 two Israeli policemen were killed by gunmen who opened fire on their car in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank.

Last December, an Israeli resident of a West Bank settlement was shot to death on a road near his home, and last month a Palestinian youth who had been throwing stones at Israeli cars passing his West Bank village was shot dead, when an Israeli settler whose car was hit opened fire.

The Israeli military, which maintains overall control in the West Bank, has been easing movement for Palestinians in line with improving security and a readiness to help the local economy grow. Roadblocks have been removed as newly trained Palestinian security forces loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, began to assume a more active role.

Noting an easing of restrictions, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem stated in its annual report, released Monday, that there were 44 staffed checkpoints inside the West Bank in February, compared with 64 in 2008.

As expected, the Israeli cabinet on Monday unanimously approved a panel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of nine activists in a commando raid on a Turkish ship in the Gaza flotilla, an episode that drew international condemnation and severely damaged relations with Turkey. The panel is to be led by a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice, Jacob Turkel, and will include two Israeli experts and two foreign observers.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told his ministers on Monday that he believed that the cabinet’s decision “to establish a special, independent public commission will make it clear to the entire world that the State of Israel acts according to law, transparently and with full responsibility.”

But Mr. Abbas said the Israeli panel did not correspond to what the United Nations Security Council had asked for, according to The Associated Press. After the raid, the Council called for “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards.”

Turkey, which had also called for an international investigation, dismissed the Israeli panel out of hand. “We have no trust at all that Israel, a country that has carried out such an attack on a civilian convoy in international waters, will conduct an impartial investigation,” said Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, according to Agence France-Presse.

Some Israelis had their own criticism of the panel, focusing on the Israeli members’ age.

“Judge Turkel, 75, who was not known for his speed even when he was an active judge, will spend the time with 93-year-old Shabtai Rosen and 86-year-old Amos Horev,” wrote Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s leading columnists, in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot.

“Their important contribution, each in his own field, to law and security, is to their credit,” he added. “It is just a shame that they are being appointed to a committee 30 years too late.”

A senior Israeli minister, Dan Meridor, defended the appointments on Israel Radio. “I know people who are young, and they are less good than people who are older,” he said. “These people have reached an age, they are people with a lot of experience.”

Israel has come under powerful international pressure to lift or significantly ease its blockade of Gaza, where the Islamic group Hamas is in control.

Speaking in Belgium, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and Middle East envoy, expressed optimism that Israel would soon take steps to allow more goods into Gaza.

“I hope very much in the next days we will get the in-principle commitment that we require, but then also steps beginning to be taken,” Mr. Blair said as he left a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

The change under discussion would allow goods to enter Gaza unless they were specifically banned. At present only authorized categories of products are allowed in. Last week the Israeli government widened the list of items allowed to include jam, preserves, juice and other supplies.