Israeli right-wingers' frustration with "their" government, already high because of what they consider Mr Ariel Sharon's unconscionable restraint after the Tel Aviv suicide bombing on June 1st, grew more intense on two fronts yesterday.
First, Mr Sharon urged settlers to "stand firm" and grit their teeth following the death of a five-month-old baby who was hit by stones in the West Bank last week. And then the country's legal authorities proved reluctant to press charges against an Arab Knesset member who has been advocating increased Arab resistance.
At a demonstration outside Mr Sharon's office last night, Mr Benny Shoham urged Mr Sharon to hit back at the Palestinian Authority for the death of his son, Yehudah, who died yesterday having spent six days in intensive care since his family's car was stoned on the road near their settlement of Shiloh.
Mr Sharon, who came out to address the demonstrators, recognising that all of them probably voted for him in February's elections, told them that "Israel will lose" in the conflict with the Palestinians if its people press every day for harsh military action.
Mr Sharon has been maintaining what he has called a unilateral ceasefire since late last month, although Israeli troops killed three Bedouin women in Gaza on Saturday, and Israel was blamed for a bomb in Tulkarm yesterday that left an activist in the radical Islamic Jihad group, Mr Imad Abu Thyab, seriously wounded. Israel denied involvement.
The Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, declared his own ceasefire 10 days ago, and the American CIA chief, Mr George Tenet, was last night meeting Israeli and Palestinian security officials to try to formalise the truce. He was reported to have made minor amendments to an earlier proposal, and now to be telling both sides to "take it or leave it".
Mr Sharon's natural supporters were also fuming yesterday at official disinclination to indict Mr Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab Knesset member, on charges relating to his current visit to Syria, where on Sunday he attended a ceremony marking the first anniversary of the death of President Hafez Assad.
In his speech there, Mr Bishara said that the Sharon government was giving the Arabs the choice between "accepting Israel's dictates, or full-scale war". The "third alternative, the path of resistance", he said, had to be "enlarged".
Mr Bishara claimed yesterday that, rather than inciting to violence against Israel, he had actually been trying "to prevent war". Israel's Attorney-General, Mr Elyakim Rubinstein, was not persuaded, noting that Syria is "a nation formally at war with Israel", and that Mr Bishara attended the gathering in the company of such avowed enemies as the Hizbullah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
Nevertheless, Mr Rubinstein said it would be hard to prove that Mr Bishara's remarks were "close to certain" to produce violence, and therefore difficult to make charges against him stick. Similarly, the Justice Minister, Mr Meir Shetreet, a member of Mr Sharon's Likud party, counselled against awarding Mr Bishara the status of "a tortured saint" by giving him "a political trial".
Israeli Arab leaders did not rush to defend Mr Bishara. Curiously, in Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab city, the local daily ignored his speech.