Having originally said it would co-operate fully with a UN team appointed to investigate the fighting at the Jenin refugee camp, Israel is now involved in a full-fledged confrontation with UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, over the panel's composition and mandate.
With the team set to arrive in Israel today, it was even reported last night that the Israeli government was considering attempting to physically prevent the investigators, led by the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, from reaching the camp.
Palestinian officials have alleged that Israel massacred civilians during eight days of heavy fighting there.
Israel has adamantly denied this, with officials asserting that of some 50 to 70 Palestinians killed, almost all of them were gunmen. Some 50 bodies have been found so far. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting.
In a series of meetings at the UN headquarters in New York, Israeli officials have sought to have military experts added to the fact-finding team.
They also want immunity from any future prosecution for soldiers who testify before it and to have the panel mandated to widen its probe to examine the "terrorist infrastructure" that sent 23 suicide bombers into Israel from the camp. And they want an Israeli escort for the panel in Jenin.
However, Mr Annan and his officials would not be moved on most of these demands, or on a request that the panel's report be presented to both Israeli and Palestinian officials for perusal and possible amendment before its formal completion.
Instead, the panel is to submit its findings to both sides 48 hours before formally reporting back to the UN, without the possibility of amendment. Further talks were taking place last night in New York, and Israel was said to be seeking American intervention but to no immediate avail.
All indications from the US, indeed, are that the Bush administration has now run out of patience with Israel over its activities in the West Bank.
Warned by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah during their five-hour meeting in Texas on Thursday that his support for Israel was damaging America's standing throughout the Arab world, President Bush yesterday demanded that Israel finish its Operation Defensive Shield offensive. "It's time to end this. to quit it altogether," he said.
Instead, the Israeli army yesterday briefly re-entered the town of Qalkilya, where troops shot dead the local head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in an exchange of fire.
Some 20 Palestinians were arrested, including two alleged by Israel to have been poised to set out on suicide-bombings.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Hamas leaders joined calls by other Palestinian groups to prevent young boys embarking on what amount to suicidal attacks on Israeli targets. This followed the killings by Israeli troops of four boys in their early teens attempting to infiltrate Israeli settlements in Gaza in the past week.
Israel's Channel 2 TV last night reported that the army was now working on plans for Operation Defensive Shield II because, although it estimated that its offensive had dealt a "crippling blow" to the orchestrators of suicide bombings, it anticipated only a temporary lull in such attacks and it recognised that the scale of its activities had created a new wave of embittered would-be bombers.
Yesterday, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, told US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, that he was prepared to lift his siege of the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, held in a building in Ramallah for almost a month. But that the killers of Israel's Tourism Minister, convicted by a Palestinian military tribunal in the same building on Thursday, would have to be handed over to Israel.
At the other siege site, Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, Israel is now said to be demanding the arrests of only a handful of men alleged to have been involved in attacks on Israeli targets, rather than more the two dozen Palestinian gunmen it had earlier sought, who are in the church along with another 150 Palestinians and some 50 clerics.
Two Palestinians were injured in exchanges of fire in the compound yesterday.
Of nine youths who left the church on Thursday, eight were freed by Israel after overnight detention. Four more men, two of them Palestinian policemen, emerged from the compound yesterday and were taken away by Israeli troops for questioning.