After again frustrating the international community late on Tuesday night with his decision to hold up co-operation with a UN fact-finding team to the Jenin refugee camp, Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, yesterday sent a team of legal experts to negotiate with UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, over the composition of the team, and to insist it also look into Palestinian suicide attacks.
Israeli officials, who have expressed fears the team will pre-judge Israel as the guilty party, said Mr Sharon wants to ensure the delegation includes members with a military background - not just a humanitarian one. Israel fears that evidence gathered by the team might ultimately be used to accuse Israeli officers of war crimes.
Softening Mr Sharon's partial snub, Defence Minister Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said yesterday that Israel intends "co-operating" with the team, but it was demanding that suicide bombings, which preceded the army's offensive in the West Bank, also be examined.
While the Palestinians insist that hundreds were massacred in the Jenin camp, Israel has rejected this, insisting that dozens of people, the vast majority of them gunmen, were killed in fierce house-to-house fighting. The Palestinians have also accused Israel of blocking humanitarian aid to the camp.
"From our point of view, the whole thing is a set-up for Israel," said Mr Gideon Meir, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, referring to the UN probe. "Everything is against Israel here."
That grievance, harboured by many Israelis, that the world has adopted a double-standard by criticising Israel's military offensive while being soft on suicide bombings, was echoed by President Moshe Katzav, who said it was "high time" that "the bleeding-heart liberals of the world" spoke out against "unprecedented terrorist attacks committed against Israelis".
The Palestinians seized on Mr Sharon's about-face - the prime minister had originally agreed, albeit reluctantly, to co-operate with the UN team - as proof that Israel was involved in trying to cover up events in the camp. "I believe that these Israeli practices reflect one thing, that they have a big thing to hide," said Palestinian Minister Mr Saeb Erekat.
So far, Mr Annan has indicated willingness to accede to Israel's demand that a military expert be added to the team, but he insisted yesterday that the delegation would arrive in the region on Saturday. The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, backed the UN mission yesterday, saying it was in the "best interests" of both sides. But Mr Powell also appeared to put little store in the massacre claims, saying that allowing the team to proceed was preferable to "the coarse speculation that was out there as to what happened, with terms being tossed around like massacre and mass graves, none of which so far seems to be the case".
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, negotiators from both sides sat down for a second day of talks yesterday aimed at ending the stand-off at the Church of the Nativity, between Israeli troops and some 200 gunmen stuck inside for more than three weeks, along with a group of clerics.
Before the two sides met, one Palestinian was shot coming out of the church by a sniper, and two surrendered to the troops outside.
The man later died of his wounds. In gun battles around the church an Israeli soldier was also shot and taken to hospital with serious injuries.
Five Palestinians were killed in the territories yesterday, two in a gunfight during an army raid on a West Bank village, and three - two of them known militants - when an explosion ripped through a house in a Gaza refugee camp.