Aides to the besieged Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, curtly dismissed a suggestion from Israel that he accept voluntary exile as Israel yesterday extended its military incursions into three more West Bank cities with 15 Palestinians reported killed. David Horovitz, reports from Jerusalem.
At the same time, Hizbullah gunmen in south Lebanon fired mortars and rockets into northern Israel, drawing Israeli air raids on Hizbullah positions. Israeli threatened Lebanon's patron state, Syria, with far more forceful retaliation if the fire continued - precisely the scenario that could widen the conflict into a regional war.
European Union leaders urged Israel to pull its troops out of Palestinian areas. "We cannot confuse the fight against terrorism with the destruction of the Palestinian Authority," said the EU foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana. Arab League foreign ministers are convening in Cairo for emergency talks today or tomorrow, with Jordan considering the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Amman, Egypt contemplating moves to downgrade relations with Israel, and the Palestinians demanding that the two countries sever their ties altogether.
Crucially, though, the Bush Administration is not pushing for an immediate military pullback, with Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell cautioning Israel to "take care". President Bush has effectively endorsed the incursions as "self-defence" against a wave of suicide bombings by Hamas and Mr Arafat's own Fatah faction - seven bombings in seven days, as well as a failed attack on an Israeli agricultural village yesterday. Nonetheless, Mr Powell rejected Mr Sharon's talk of exiling Mr Arafat.
Like it or not, Mr Powell said, "Chairman Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian people" and "sending him to exile will just give him another place from which to conduct the same kinds of activities and give the same messages."
Mr Sharon has tightened Mr Arafat's isolation - on a single floor of a building in his former Ramallah headquarters complex - by refusing requests from senior EU and UN officials to visit him. Even US envoy Mr Anthony Zinni is being kept away. "If they would like that we would bring him somewhere, or they will come with helicopters and take him from here," the Prime Minister said, "it's going to be a one-way ticket. He will not be able to return."
"No one in his sane mind would willingly accept exile from his country," retorted Mr Saeb Erekat, a leading Palestinian Authority minister, speaking on Mr Arafat's behalf.
At Beitunia on the outskirts of Ramallah, Israeli forces mounted a pre-dawn assault on the headquarters of the main PA security compound, battering buildings with helicopter missiles and tank fire, and eventually forcing the surrender of some 200 men inside - most of them members of Col Jibril Rajoub's Preventive Security Forces. Palestinian sources reported five people killed in Ramallah, including three civilians, one of them a woman shot outside a hospital.
Dozens of Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles also invaded Bethlehem, where there was heavy fighting outside the Church of the Nativity. Three civilians - including a mother and son, hit outside a convent - and four Palestinian gunmen were reported killed in the city. A Vatican spokesman denied earlier reports that a priest, the Italian-born Jacques Amateis, was among the dead.
Troops also entered the city of Tulkarm, where one man was reported shot dead. Two Palestinians were found dead in their car outside the city in an attack Israeli officials believe was carried out by a Jewish vigilante group. Late last night, the army was also moving into Jenin.
Mr Sharon has said he is confident that the troops will "prevail in the battle against terror", which he ordered after a suicide bombing in Netanya last Wednesday; two more victims of that blast died yesterday, raising the death toll to 24.