MIDDLE EAST: Israeli army carries out mass round-ups, blindfolding and questioning of Palestinian males in Gaza and Ramallah. The Israeli army continues to up the military ante against the Palestinians, ahead of the arrival of President Bush's peace broker to the troubled area, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
There could be no clearer proof of the depth of the hatred. The bloodied body of the Palestinian man was suspended, by the feet, from an electricity pylon in Ramallah's central square yesterday.
He had been killed as an alleged collaborator, suspected by gunmen from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO of having provided Israeli intelligence with information that, last week, enabled the Israeli army to kill three of its number.
The very centre of Ramallah was one of the few areas of the West Bank town to which Mr Arafat's loyalists had unfettered access yesterday.
Before dawn, the Israeli army sent a vast influx of troops into Ramallah - almost every Israeli combat fighter, and many reservists, were deployed there or in Gaza yesterday - taking control of most neighbourhoods, upping the military ante another few notches following the major raids on West Bank refugee camps in recent days.
In those earlier raids, hundreds of Palestinian males had obeyed army orders to assemble in main squares, where they were searched for explosives, disarmed of any weapons and, in many cases, blindfolded, handcuffed and questioned over any involvement in violence against Israel.
In Ramallah's al-Am'ari refugee camp yesterday, by contrast, Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority ordered the local men "to remain steadfast and to resist occupation". So Israeli soldiers searched house-by-house and made dozens of arrests, again employing the handcuffs and blindfolds, witnesses said.
On Monday, Mr Arafat had accused Israel of "Nazi" tactics - relating to instances where soldiers wrote numbers on detainees' arms.
The army's chief of staff, Gen Shaul Mofaz, promised yesterday to stop the practice, in response to furious criticism by a member of parliament who is also a Holocaust survivor.
The intensified Israeli military action has clearly been timed ahead of tomorrow's scheduled arrival here of the American would-be peace broker, Gen Anthony Zinni.
Presumably, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, anticipates pressure from Mr Zinni to roll back the troops and work toward a ceasefire. Hence the desperate search now for the key militants who are building the bombs and training the bombers.
However, even Israeli military sources acknowledge that many of the most dangerous men have evaded them.
There can be no doubting the new hatreds fuelled not merely by the dozens of Palestinian deaths in the latest gun battles, but by the mass round-ups, blindfolding and handcuffing, and questioning of Palestinian males.
It may be no great surprise to hear a spokesman in Gaza for Hamas - a group which publicly calls for Israel's elimination - vowing yesterday "to kill the occupier, to kill him everywhere, every village and every city".
One of Mr Arafat's most senior advisers, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, could also be heard raging that "talking peace with the Israelis was a historic mistake".
Most Israelis feel exactly the same about talking peace with Mr Arafat, consider him to be bent on destroying Israel, and regard the army's activities as an overdue effort to try and thwart the suicide attacks and shootings.
All of which means that Mr Zinni faces a near-impossible task.
The intifada has destroyed the economy of both peoples. It has discredited the moderates. It has brought death and fear to every neighbourhood. Nowhere has been immune - not the café across the street from the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem (blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber on Saturday night, with 11 Israelis killed); not the official offices of Mr Arafat on the Gaza beachfront (destroyed by Israeli missiles a few hours later).
Israel believes that Mr Arafat could still rein in the gunmen from his own Fatah faction and use his tens of thousands of policemen to smash the Islamic militants, if he wanted to, but says he instead chooses to encourage new attacks.
The Palestinians argue that Mr Sharon is bent on settling an old score with his Lebanon war enemy and on permanently reoccupying Palestinian areas.
And the blood-letting goes on.