MIDDLE EAST: If the smashed, besieged Ramallah complex in which Yasser Arafat is being held prisoner by Israel used to constitute the main political symbol of Palestinian Authority control, the nearby Beitunia compound of West Bank security chief Col Jibril Rajoub was its military headquarters.
Early yesterday morning, Israeli attack helicopters, tanks and heavy machine-guns began an assault on the compound, scorching the main building and smashing through the roof and blasting holes through the walls of surrounding structures.
Col Rajoub had for days been resisting an Israeli demand for the surrender of those inside, denying that key Hamas bombmakers and gunmen were hiding out alongside the hundreds of armed members of his Preventive Security Apparatus.
By last night, however, most of the compound had been evacuated - its inhabitants emerging, hands raised, to be piled onto buses by the army and sent off for interrogation. There were suggestions that 10, 15 or perhaps more gunmen were still holed up within the compound's shattered perimeter walls. But the battle of Beitunia was essentially over. And the abject surrender may well come to be regarded as the effective end of the Palestinian Authority.
For the entire 18 months of the intifada, Col Rajoub had kept the Preventive Security Apparatus away from direct involvement in anti-Israel violence - although some of his recruits "moonlighted", out of uniform, as gunmen in the Tanzim units of Mr Arafat's Fatah group. In part because of that restraint, in part because he was known to be urging Mr Arafat to give him the authority to crush the Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide-bomber cells, Mr Rajoub had come to be regarded by Israel as perhaps the leading face of moderation, the hoped-for Palestinian leader in a post-Arafat era; for precisely the same reasons he had come to be mistrusted by Mr Arafat.
But last night, Mr Rajoub was in deep personal trouble over the Beitunia surrender. He himself was conspicuously absent from his compound as the day's drama unfolded. Hamas spokesmen publicly accused him of selling out many of its key operatives - who had indeed been hiding out there - and called for him to be tried for treason. Mr Arafat's advisers were giving him no public backing.
Although, earlier in the day, Mr Rajoub had said he ordered those within to resist the Israeli fire and "fight to the last bullet", most accounts had him mediating the surrender deal, with the Americans as brokers.
One man apparently not among the surrendering group was Mr Marwan Barghouti, who Israeli military officers had initially said they believed was inside. Last night they speculated that he had escaped before the bombardment began.
The head of Mr Arafat's Fatah in the West Bank, Mr Barghouti has gained popularity among Palestinians - in direct contrast to Col Rajoub - for publicly resisting all calls for an end to violence, and has been alleged by Israel to be directly orchestrating shooting and bombing attacks. An Israeli security source was quoted yesterday as saying that Mr Barghouti was now being energetically sought and that, if found, "we're going to arrest him, of course. Our big mistake is we used to respect the \ VIPs too much." Israeli military officials claimed last night that the escalating military assault, which they now suggest will last for another 10 days or so, is paying major dividends - and that dozens of "big players in the terrorist infrastructure", responsible for the incessant horrific suicide bombings, are being caught, denied the opportunity to flee from one city to another as in the past.
Whether or not this is the case, politicians on the left of the Israeli spectrum are lining up to declare that military might alone will not thwart terror, that Mr Sharon must offer the Palestinians a political horizon, and that the massive incursion is embittering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians civilians, who will henceforth be more prone to support and engage in anti-Israeli action.
Widespread curfews have been enforced in each city the troops have entered. Residents of Ramallah were allowed a few hours' break to go out and purchase supplies yesterday afternoon after days under curfew. In Gaza, locals were gathering food in expectation that their area could be next on the Israeli agenda.
With Mr Arafat the most besieged of all, Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's idea that isolating him would weaken him is backfiring - turning him instead into "a pan-Arab hero", as the Israeli analyst Mr Ze'ev Schiff noted yesterday.
Mr Sharon is plainly at a loss as to what to do with Mr Arafat. As he toured West Bank army bases yesterday in the company of his chief of staff, Gen Shaul Mofaz, they were caught on camera, apparently unawares, discussing the fate of an unnamed individual. "Now is the time to kick him out," said the general. "We'll never have a better opportunity." "We have to be careful," responded Mr Sharon.
Israeli commentators said they assumed the two were discussing Mr Barghouti, but it might equally well have been Mr Arafat himself.