While insisting they were doing their best to prevent further suicide bombings in the wake of Wednesday's Jerusalem blast, Palestinian leaders were yesterday fuming over Israeli threats to re-enter West Bank cities if there was no massive Palestinian crackdown on Islamic extremists.
"We don't take orders from Netanyahu," the Palestinians' West Bank security chief, Mr Jibril Rajoub, said in a Voice of Palestine radio interview, stating the prime minister's "crazy and irresponsible policies" had prompted the bombers to strike.
And Mr Nabil Sha'ath, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, added that were the Israelis to send troops back into the West Bank cities controlled by Mr Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, "it would be a declaration of war against us".
Mr Netanyahu said yesterday Mr Arafat had done "damn all" to stop Palestinian militants and that the international community had failed until now to demand he do so. "I insist on a real peace and it begins with Arafat's battle against terrorism," he said. "That is what the international community, that is what the European Community . . . has now the obligation to demand."
Ten of the 13 Israeli victims to die in the Wednesday blast at the crowded Mahaneh Yehuda vegetable market were laid to rest yesterday, at funerals characterised by the restraint of the mourners.
Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that the majority of those killed were elderly people. Perhaps, too, because Israel now has a right-wing government that, unlike its Labour predecessor, cannot easily be criticised by bomb-traumatised Israelis for being overly generous to the Palestinians.
Although Israel has suspended peace talks with the Palestinians, contacts on security were resumed in the course of the day, and both sides arrested dozens of suspected Islamic militants.
Disinclined to consider whether its own reluctance to move forward with the peace process might have fuelled Palestinian anger in recent months, and thus made suicide bombers easy for Hamas to recruit, Israel had demanded, on Wednesday night, that Mr Arafat smash Hamas via mass arrests, confiscation of armaments, and similar measures.
If he did not, said Mr David Bar-Illan, a Netanyahu aide, yesterday, "Israel will have to go into the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority . . . and get the terrorists".
Mr Rajoub reportedly countered that, were that to happen, his forces would "meet Israel in combat, to protect Palestine's honour".
Among those detained by Israel were relatives of two men from the village of Dahariya, south of Hebron, Hamas activists tentatively identified as the suicide bombers. Family members gave blood samples to facilitate a positive identification of the unrecognisable corpses from the scene. Hamas has taken responsibility for the bombing and warned, in one leaflet, of further attacks if all its prisoners in Israeli jails are not freed by Sunday.
The Israeli Prime Minister said Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority had had a "very free ride" over violations of interim peace deals signed since 1993. He said peace had no meaning if attackers were able to operate from the territory "of your peace partner who does damn all about it".
"That has got to change," he said. Reuter reports from Ramallah:
The Palestinian Legislative Council yesterday gave Mr Arafat one month to dissolve his cabinet and appoint a new one following a corruption probe.
The 88-member council voted 56-1 to urge Mr Arafat to appoint a new cabinet with "qualified and experienced ministers" by September.
The council acted after nine members issued a scathing report this week demanding Mr Arafat curb corruption.