In September 1999, acting on a request from the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak approved the return, from Israeli-enforced exile, of Mr Abu Ali Mustafa, who hailed from the village of Arabeh, near Jenin in the West Bank.
The Palestinian radical was one of the founders of the PLO but strongly opposed Mr Arafat's embrace of the then-intact Oslo peace process. He was not at the time regarded by the Israeli security forces as any kind of threat.
Indeed, Mr. Barak's thinking was that, as the peace process moved into the "end game," it might be beneficial for Mr Arafat to try and improve relations with some of the Palestinian "rejectionists", men like Mr Mustafa, who had always opposed the peace process, potentially widening the circle of Palestinian support for a permanent accord.
Even before the start of the intifada conflict of which he has now become the highest-profile victim, Mr Mustafa had made clear, however, that he was not about to moderate his positions. He had opposed the cancellation of clauses in the PLO covenant that called for Israel's destruction. And in a television interview with the Al-Jazeera satellite network in May 2000, two months before he succeeded his ailing colleague George Habash as the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he reiterated his commitment to the "strategic aim" of "armed struggle" against Israel.
Aides to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - who personally sanctioned the assassination along with Defence Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer - insisted yesterday that, since the intifada erupted, Mr Mustafa, who was 63, had been "personally" directing violent attacks against Israel. They listed a series of car-bombings in recent weeks which they said he had overseen.
"His resumΘ," declared Mr Ra'anan Gissin, a spokesman for Mr Sharon, "is soaked with the blood of Israeli civilians." But Palestinian outrage at the hit - described by Mr Arafat's Information Minister, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo as marking the crossing of "all borders, all red lines" - stems in good part from the sense that Mr Mustafa had evolved into a political leader, rather a fighter.
He was "the head of the second largest faction in the PLO," Mr. Abed Rabbo pointed out - a faction, moreover, supported by perhaps as much as 15 per cent of the Palestinian public. His elimination was no triumph for Israeli intelligence, no audacious interception of a bomber en route to his target, but, rather, a missile strike on a grey-haired man who was working at his desk in his office on the third floor of an apartment bloc.
It was no surprise that Mr Mustafa's loyalists in the PFLP vowed to avenge his death, that cries of protest were heard across the Arab world, that Israeli-Arab members of parliament condemned the killing as a "foul crime", and that the leftist Israeli opposition leader Mr Yossi Sarid objected to the Sharon government's "dangerous escalation".
What was unprecedented - after months in which Israel has "targeted" several dozen alleged intifada militants - was the criticism from within Mr Sharon's cabinet. Mr Salah Tarif, a minister without portfolio, for instance, argued that the killing was "not wise" - since it would deepen Palestinian anger and provoke further violence. And Mr Matan Vilnai, the science minister who is a former deputy army chief of staff, said he was worried by the demonstrable "lack of a government strategy" and the reliance on military might to end a conflict that plainly could not be resolved by force alone.
The signs of deepening Palestinian anger are, indeed, plain to see - with a coalition of Palestinian voices, from the extremists of Hamas all the way across to Mr. Arafat's calm and measured deputy, Abu Mazen, deploring the killing. Foremost in the minds of the Palestinian leadership "establishment", of course, is the recognition that Mr Mustafa's office in Ramallah is barely 300 metres from Mr. Arafat's.
The Israeli army announced early yesterday that it had occupied "dominant positions" in Beit Jala, neat Bethlehem.