The so-called Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, which has been violated almost daily ever since its inception last month, seems closer than ever to total collapse, following the killings in the past 24 hours of at least four Palestinians and one Israeli, and the explosion of two cars bombs inside Israel.
Most Palestinian groupings now say openly they are not honouring any truce, while the Israeli government has adopted a strategy of what it calls "active defence", which evidently includes the assassination of alleged militants. The UN Middle East envoy, Mr Terje Larsen, describing the ceasefire as "fragile", said after talks with the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, in Gaza that "all indications are now it will not hold".
As ever, both sides are indignantly blaming each other for the all too familiar upsurge in violence. But whereas such escalations in recent weeks have been damped by the urgent intervention of high-profile American or European envoys, and a reluctant recommitment of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the truce effort, all the signs this time suggest that both sets of leaders are now resigned to a worsening of the conflict.
Thousands of angry mourners yesterday attended the funerals of the victims of the most serious incident, which took place overnight on Sunday, when an Israeli assault helicopter fired a reported 10 missiles at a car near the West Bank town of Jenin, killing all three of its occupants. Israeli officials, making no attempt to dodge responsibility for the attack, said that the car had been filled with explosives, and had been fired on because its occupants were en route to "a certain terrorist attack". One of the dead men was named as Mohammad Bashirat, a Hamas activist alleged by Israel to have orchestrated several recent bombings. Another was a member of Mr Arafat's Fatah faction; the third was affiliated to the Islamic Jihad movement.
Mr Arafat called the Israeli strike "a flagrant violation of the ceasefire" and "a crime against humanity". His aides said that Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, was deliberately undermining ceasefire hopes, because he did not want to return to peace negotiations and freeze West Bank Jewish settlement building.
Mr Sharon was unrepentant, insisting: "When we learn of a group going out to attack us, we reserve the right to take action to prevent that attack and killing."
Later yesterday, in broad daylight in a market that straddles the Israel-West Bank border, an Israeli was shot dead while out shopping; gunmen from the Tanzim militia, purportedly loyal to Mr Arafat, admitted responsibility. Also yesterday, Israeli soldiers shot and fatally wounded a Palestinian who they said was planting a bomb near a settlement east of Nablus in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Mr Sharon has cancelled a planned visit to Belgium, scheduled for late this week, citing an overcrowded schedule.
The Prime Minister begins a trip to Europe with a visit to Germany on Thursday, but has crossed Belgium off his agenda - presumably because of moves gathering momentum there towards indicting him for war crimes relating to the 1982 massacre of Palestinians by Christian gunmen he had sent into Beirut's Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.