Radical Palestinian groups said today the arrest of one of their leaders was a dangerous development that put the Palestinian Authority in direct opposition to all Palestinian and Islamist factions.
Palestinian police yesterday arrested Mr Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who is wanted by Israel for the assassination of cabinet minister Mr Rehavam Zeevi.
"The authority should know that what it did will put it in full confrontation with all the national and Islamist factions without exception," PFLP spokesman Mr Maher al-Taher said in a statement.
Mr Khaled Meshal, head of the politburo of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, said the group would continue its attacks against Israel.
In a separate joint statement, Palestinian national and Islamist factions based in Damascus also condemned Mr Saadat's arrest.
Meanwhile Israel vowed today to keep Mr Arafat confined to the West Bank city of Ramallah despite the Mr Saadat's arrest.
Israeli officials voiced scepticism about the arrest which followed the killing of two Jewish settlers that further strained a battered ceasefire.
The new cycle of bloodshed has dealt another blow to US efforts to cement a ceasefire that President Arafat announced a month ago under intense international pressure to rein in Islamic militants after a wave of suicide bombings in Israel.
In the latest violence, gunmen killed an Arab driving an Israeli van near the Jewish Sanur settlement in the West Bank.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the drive-by shooting but sources close to Palestinian militant factions said the gunmen fired at the vehicle believing an Israeli was behind the wheel.
Yesterday a group linked to Mr Arafat's Fatah movement said it had killed two settlers yesterday to avenge the death in an explosion on Monday of one of its leaders, Mr Raed al-Karmi, accused by Israel of deadly attacks. Israeli security sources said Israel was behind the blast.