In a murderous demonstration of the collapsing grip of the Palestinian Authority, a gang of Palestinian gunmen burst into a West Bank courtroom yesterday and shot dead three men who had just been ordered jailed for killing a security officer. David Horovitz, in Jerusalem, reports
Meanwhile, Israel ratcheted up its rhetorical war with Iran, with the Israeli army's chief of staff calling Tehran's march to nuclear self-sufficiency "an existential threat" and intimating that Israel might take pre-emptive military action to defend itself.
The murders at a military tribunal in Jenin, the northernmost town in the West Bank, constituted perhaps the most brutal proof to date of mob contempt for the rule of President Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. PA officials had clearly feared that the hearing might turn violent, and had stationed a large contingent of policemen to secure proceedings, which took place on the third floor of the town's Chamber of Commerce building.
In the dock were three members of the Kmeil family, charged with the murder a few days ago at a nearby garbage dump of Osama Kmeil, another member of their clan. A member of Mr Arafat's Preventive Security Services, Osama Kmeil, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, had apparently killed several other clan members who allegedly collaborated with Israel.
Convicting the three men of Osama Kmeil's murder, the military judge sentenced two of them to death, but then immediately commuted the sentences, and ordered all three men jailed for 15 years.
When word of the sentences reached the hundreds of people who had gathered outside the building, eyewitnesses said, they burst inside. The three defendants were being hidden in a bathroom for their protection, but the gunmen, also allegedly Kmeil clan members, tracked them down and killed them.
Although the violence reflected the tension of a bitter and lengthy feud within the Kmeil clan, it also pointed to the weakening grip of Mr Arafat's authority - which is ever more openly opposed by militant Palestinian groups that want to escalate Intifada violence against Israel, and is simultaneously being pressured by Israel and the US to smash those militant groups.
Israel has frequently bombed PA police and security installations in retaliation for Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets. Palestinian officials said that yesterday's hearing could not be held in a PA security building, since they had all been blown up by Israel in previous raids on Jenin, a town from which several suicide bombers have set out for attacks inside Israel.
Mr Arafat is also now coming under pressure from Egypt, which has been sending emissaries to Mr Arafat to urge him to crack down, in particular, on the Iranian-backed Islamic extremist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Israel is also protesting what it says is a "strategic" effort by Tehran to foment violence against it - from the Palestinian territories, from southern Lebanon and, via long-range missile, from Iranian territory as well.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is meeting at the White House with President Bush tomorrow, and the threat posed by Iran will be high on their agenda.
On Monday, Iran's Defence Minister, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, had warned of an "unimaginable" response should Israel attack Iran - reflecting concern in Tehran that Israel might seek to forestall its progress to nuclear self-sufficiency by raiding its nuclear power plant under construction at Bushehr.
