THE MIDDLE EAST: They were eating in the cafe across the street from the Prime Minister's residence, on the very square where left-wing demonstrators have so often urged the government to withdraw unilaterally from the occupied territories. Many of them were left-wingers themselves, believers in reconciliation, secular men and women all aged between 22 and 31 - a fast-vanishing breed in Jerusalem.
Two of them - Uri Felix and Danit Dagan - were going to get married in May. Another, Limor Ben-Shoham, had celebrated her 27th birthday in the same cafe a week earlier. They'd felt safe in the Moment cafe. After all, who'd dare blow up an establishment so near to the Prime Minister's house? Fouad Hurani, a 20-year-old Palestinian, killed 11 of them, and injured 50 more, late on Saturday night. There was a security guard on the door, so he detonated the explosives he was carrying just outside. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Hamas; a response, the organisation said, to Israel's killing of dozens of Palestinians, many in clashes at West Bank refugee camps, over the past few days.
A short while earlier and a 90-minute drive away, in the coastal town of Netanya, two Palestinian gunmen had thrown a hand-grenade and opened fire in and around the lobby of a hotel, killing a nine-month-old baby girl and a volunteer ambulance driver. This attack was claimed by gunmen affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO.
Even as Moment's owner was understandably contradicting himself - telling reporters that he didn't know how he could go on while also resolving to rebuild and reopen the destroyed cafe as soon as possible - the Israeli military response was unfolding. Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority headquarter offices on the beachfront at Gaza constituted one of the most prominent symbols of his regime. Firing 30 missiles in about as many minutes, Israeli helicopters destroyed it, leaving precious little for Mr Arafat to return to, now that Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon has indicated that he will soon release the Palestinian leader from three months' confinement in Ramallah. The walls fell in at the suite where Mr Arafat used to host his foreign visitors.
Israel also fired missiles at other Authority installations nearby, at Mr Arafat's offices in Nablus and an intelligence HQ outside Ramallah; witnesses said some two dozen Palestinians were injured in the raids.
Meanwhile, Israel continued its military incursions into several refugee camps, part of an escalated army operation that has seen some 50 Palestinians killed in the past three days - most of them in gunbattles, but many others civilians caught in the crossfire.
More than 1,000 Palestinians were arrested at the Tulkarm camp at the weekend, but most have already or will soon be released. Only a few dozen Tanzim gunmen from Mr Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO were captured and disarmed, and Israeli military sources acknowledged that many of the "most wanted" men in the camp had slipped away.
While asserting that Israel had no desire to permanently reoccupy Palestinian areas, the Israeli army's chief of staff, Gen Shaul Mofaz, indicated yesterday that the effort to capture the Tanzim gunmen - who have carried out many recent attacks in the West Bank and inside sovereign Israel - in the camps would continue. But the army activities have prompted growing international criticism, and Gen Mofaz acknowledged too that they had not put a halt to the attacks on Israelis.
Indeed, there was still more violence yesterday: a Palestinian gunman shot dead an Israeli at the Gaza settlement of Netzarim before soldiers gunned him down. Three Palestinians were killed in and around Bethlehem's Dehaishe refugee camp - all of them said by the army to have been transporting or manufacturing explosives.
Another Palestinian was shot dead by troops north of Jerusalem, having ignored an order to halt, and was found to be carrying a rifle, bullets and grenades, the army said.
Late on Saturday, Israeli troops in Gaza ran over and killed one of their own colleagues while under Palestinian fire. Also overnight Saturday, Israel killed a Fatah gunman, firing a missile at his car outside Ramallah.