Reacting to the killings of five US citizens in Wednesday's bombing at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and reiterating his conviction that Mr Yasser Arafat is not committed to thwarting such attacks, President Bush yesterday declared himself to be "as angry as Israel is right now" over the "innocent lives lost", writes David Horovitz, in Jerusalem.
Mr Bush's unusually emotional expression of outrage was echoed at the scene of the bombing itself by the US ambassador here, Mr Dan Kurtzer, a former student at the university.
Again using wording that reflected US anger not merely at the Hamas attackers but at Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority, Mr Kurtzer spoke of a "new depth of depravity" to which "the terrorist murderers, those who sent them, and those whose action and inaction contributed to this despicable act, have descended."
Condemning such acts, as the PA has done, was not enough, the envoy added. "It is absolutely imperative that they work actively to stop terrorism immediately." The American fury was prompted by the overnight identification of five of the seven bombing victims as Americans, three of them students in their 20s. Many of the 80-plus people injured in the blast, at a crowded cafeteria in the heart of the campus, were Americans, too, along with Israeli Arabs and Jews, university staff and other overseas students. Thirteen people are still in serious condition in Jerusalem hospitals.
The university decided to hold classes as usual today, and overseas students - many of them not Jewish - queued up to tell the crowds of journalists that they would not be forced home.
"Those terrorists won't stop me studying here," Mr Terry Newman, a student at Oxford University who flew in for a year-long study programme only hours before the bombing, said. Mr Xhin Chow, studying on a summer programme, said: "We should live as usual. That's the way to defeat terrorism."
In another killing yesterday, an Israeli, Mr Shani Ladani (27), was found bound hand and foot and shot in the head at close range in a warehouse at the Tulkarm industrial zone, on the border between Israel and the West Bank, where most of the workers are Palestinians. The local Israeli army commander, Brig-Gen Gershon Yitzhak, said the killers had "exploited" the fact that Israel lifted the curfew it had been maintaining in the city "to enter the factories, to commit the murder and escape from the scene". The curfew was promptly reimposed.
A survey by the Palestinian bureau of statistics reported yesterday that almost half of all Palestinian children suffer from chronic malnutrition, pointed to drastic increases in the number of cases of stunted growth and of wasting, and blamed Israeli closures and curfews. Palestinian Authority officials say such conditions make it easy for extremist groups to recruit bombers.
Israel and the Bush Administration say, however, that Mr Arafat and other PA leaders are themselves compromised by terrorism, and Israeli officials say the curfews and closures are essential to preventing more attacks.
The army had been gradually easing some restrictions on movement in some Palestinian cities prior to Wednesday's university bombing, but the government is now said to be reconsidering this, and reconsidering plans to issue permits for thousands of Palestinians to work in Israel.
In a hitherto untried effort to deter bombers, Israel today is set to begin the process of sending two men into exile, from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. They are relatives of men involved in a fatal attack on a bus two weeks ago near the settlement of Emmanuel.
The army yesterday demolished the West Bank homes of an Islamic Jihad leader and Hassan Yusuf Sarasrah (17), who carried out a suicide bombing in central Jerusalem on Tuesday. "It is not fair," his father Atta said, amid the wreckage of the home. "I never knew that my son was going to commit such an attack, and the Israelis know that as well."
The Israeli government also said it would take what steps it could to prevent families of bombers gaining financial benefits from the attacks, in "reward" and other payments from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other sources. "If the only way to deter the bombers is to make them aware that those around them will suffer," Mr Shabtai Shavitt, a former head of Mossad, said, "then that's what we have to do."