The banners underlined the sense of frustration and bitterness. "Arafat must be defeated," urged one. "Arafat is a monster," proclaimed another. "War Now!" insisted a third, in lettering that parodied the familiar "Peace Now" emblem.
The signs were on display last night at a demonstration in Jerusalem's central Zion Square, where thousands of settlers and their supporters gathered to protest at what some have called the "fatally misguided policy of restraint" of the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon.
They meant his pursuit of a formal ceasefire to end more than eight months of violence, and his failure to order a massive military retaliation to Friday's Tel Aviv bombing.
Ironically, Mr Sharon was the guest of honour at a similar demonstration just a few months ago, and was cheered ecstatically when he promised that, if elected, he would ensure that the army was given free rein in what the Israeli right regards as a direct conflict with Mr Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority (PA).
Mr Sharon was indeed elected, in February, with a huge majority that included the full support of the settlers and the rest of the right. "We voted for him so that he would change this contemptible, shameful situation," protested one of the speakers last night, Mr Yael Avraham, from the settlement of Shilo. "How many more chances are we going to give Arafat? We get shot at every day on the roads."
Wisely, the Prime Minister stayed away from Zion Square last night. But ominously for him, many of the speakers were angry, right-wing members of his own governing coalition. The mood of the demonstration was all the more bitter because of the plight of Yehudah Shoham, a five-month-old baby who is in critical condition in hospital after being hit by a stone thrown at his parents' car on the road outside Shilo late on Tuesday night.
Near the site of that attack yesterday, dozens of settlers confronted local Palestinians - setting fire to a Palestinian greenhouse, two buildings, and some fields. At least seven Palestinians were hurt in the clash.
There were clashes, too, in central Hebron but, as has been the case all week, there was much less violence than on most days over the past eight months, when almost 500 Palestinians and more than 100 Israelis have been killed.
Mr Arafat told Israeli Arab Knesset members yesterday that he was determined to enforce a ceasefire in all areas under full PA control. He also said that the PA could hardly be blamed for the Friday suicide blast, since the bomber was Jordanian-born. (He was, however, a West Bank resident.)
Aides to Mr Arafat added that tensions might be calmed rather faster were Israel to end the blockade of Palestinian areas it has maintained since the Friday attack, and were Mr Sharon to cease referring to Mr Arafat as "a murderer" and "a pathological liar", as he did in a television interview on Tuesday.
Mr George Tenet, the American CIA director, is due here today to meet both Mr Sharon and Mr Arafat, and try and turn the fragile lull in violence into a more formal ceasefire accord.