Accusing Israel of practising "state terror," the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, yesterday pleaded for the dispatch of international observers to "protect our people from the occupation, terror and ethnic cleansing".
In an address to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr Arafat also reiterated his commitment to coexistence with Israel, and asserted that the Palestinian Authority was making "every possible effort" to create a climate conducive to the resumption of negotiations on a permanent peace accord.
As he spoke, however, an Israeli was killed and a second badly injured in a shooting attack, apparently by a Palestinian gunman near the border with the West Bank. Shortly before Mr Arafat came to the podium, the US National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, had repeated her demand that he take "action" against militants operating from Palestinian territory.
Insisting that Mr Arafat is not doing enough to thwart ongoing attacks by Palestinian extremists on Israeli targets, President Bush declined to meet him at the UN gathering. By contrast, Mr Bush is to meet Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, in the White House next month. In his speech to the assembly on Saturday, Mr Bush noted that "no national aspiration, no remembered wrong, can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent".
However, Mr Bush also made his most explicit commitment to Palestinian statehood. "We are working towards the day," he said, "when two states - Israel and Palestine - live peacefully together within secure and recognised borders as called for by the Security Council resolutions."
There had been suggestions that Mr Arafat might use yesterday's speech to unilaterally declare the establishment of Palestine.
In the event, he confined himself to an expression of "appreciation" for US support, and said he was gratified by what he described as the growing international recognition that "an independent Palestinian state, with holy Jerusalem as its capital, is the only guarantee of peace and security in the region and the world". Setting out familiar positions, Mr Arafat ruled out any further "interim accords" with Israel - the kind of non-final agreements which Mr Sharon has been suggesting as a means of ending 14 months of intifada conflict. And he called on the international community to pressure Israel into withdrawing to its 1967 borders and to recognise the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees.
The demand for up to four million Palestinians to make their homes in Israel was a key factor in the failure of last year's Camp David summit. Mr Arafat noted that Israel was continuing to deploy forces in two West Bank cities, and to restrict movement of Palestinians throughout the West Bank. Citing exaggerated figures, he asserted that 1,800 Palestinians had been killed in the intifada; most estimates suggest a toll of some 700. He made no mention of the estimated 200 Israeli fatalities.
The Israeli cabinet decided yesterday that troops would not be leaving the two cities - Jenin and Tulkarm - for the time being, because of what a spokesman termed "hot warnings" of suicide bombers preparing to leave from there to attack Israeli targets.
Palestinian officials said that an Islamic Jihad militant died in Bethlehem yesterday when the bomb he was making exploded. Outside Hebron, a Palestinian alleged to have collaborated with Israel was found murdered in a well.