ESPIONAGE lore has it that for much of the 1980s, when Mr Yasser Arafat presided over the PLO from a command headquarters in Tunis, Israel kept careful tabs on his operations by means of a simple expedient.
This was a bugging device, secreted in his office chair by an Israeli agent who had penetrated Mr Arafat's inner circle of aides.
But that, of course, was back when Israel and the PLO were enemies. Three years ago, they began a hesitant friendship, embarking on what Mr Arafat came to call "the peace of the brave". Surely there would be no need for to bug the Palestinian lead now that bugging is precisely what Mr Arafat is charging Israel with doing again, systematic, widespread tapping of the telephone lines at his Gaza City offices and other Palestinian institutions.
The first sign that something was amiss came last week, when a Palestinian explosives expert died in hospital after being injured in a mysterious Gaza City blast. Initially, Mr Arafat kept the media away, and issued no explanation for the explosion.
But eventually it was announced that the sapper, Tawfik Waji, had been trying to remove a listening device from a telephone pole when it exploded in his face.
And earlier this week, Mr Arafat's security forces closed off the road in front of the Gaza police building and began digging. Yesterday a Palestinian police official said 10 telephone bugs had been discovered and that, like last week's device, they had been designed to self destruct if attempts were made to dislodge them.
The Palestinians claim Israel left the bugs behind in 1994, when it pulled its troops out of most of Gaza, handed control over to Mr Arafat and transferred various buildings to Palestinian officials for their continued use.
While the Palestinians are railing about the Israeli "breach of trust" and asking Israel to now come and neutralise any other devices, Israel, not surprisingly, is keeping determinedly silent.
One particularly puzzling aspect of this affair remains: even if, as the Palestinians claim, Israel did want to keep a surreptitious ear on Palestinian activity after it pulled out of Gaza, why leave a network of telephone listening devices?
After all, the Palestinians use the Israeli Bezek phone system. So if Israeli officials want to listen in on the Palestinians, they need only tap the lines at the central exchange in Tel Aviv.
Danny Gur-arieh reports from Tel Aviv:
An Israeli court yesterday convicted Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir (26), the killer's brother and a third religious Jew of charges of conspiring to murder the prime minister.
Amir is already serving a life sentence for killing Mr Rabin at a Tel Aviv peace rally last November. Sentences in the separate conspiracy case against him, his brother Hagai and their friend Dror Adani, will be handed down on October 3rd.
The court also convicted the Amir brothers of weapons offences and all three on charges of conspiring to attack Palestinians. Lawyers said the Amirs faced up to 40 years in jail and Adani up to 15 years for the offences.
"We have decided unanimously to convict all three suspects of all the charges brought against them," said Judge Amnon Strashnov, head of the three judge panel, reading the verdict.
The defendants smiled throughout the hour long reading of the verdict as it became clear they were going to be convicted.
From his seat, Yigal Amir shouted: "Why don't you add a few more charges?"
Judge Strashnov answered firmly: "Keep your mouth shut or else I'll throw you out."
According to the indictment, Hagai Amir (28) amassed a huge arsenal in the family's Tel Aviv home and crafted the hollow point bullets his brother used to shoot Mr Rabin.
Adani (28) denied during the trial that he helped plot the November 4th murder, saying he had visited the Amir home hoping to romance the killer's sister but instead got pulled into a discussion on ways to assassinate the prime minister.
"After reviewing all the evidence and reading the confessions of the suspects, I have no doubt that all three conspired to kill the prime minister," Judge Strashnov said.
Yigal Amir, a right wing religious Jew, was convicted in March of murdering Mr Rabin and sentenced to life imprisonment, plus six years for wounding the prime minister's bodyguard.
Amir, a student, said he shot Mr Rabin to stop peace moves with the Palestinians.