Precisely a month after a US-brokered ceasefire was supposed to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, three people died yesterday in some of the worst violence for weeks. Meanwhile the Israeli Prime Minister indicated that harsher military action by Israel was imminent.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority (PA) wants to attract international opprobrium by declaring the ceasefire dead. Yet the level of violence is now as grave as it was before the ceasefire. Mr Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a senior aide to Mr Arafat, repeated the call for "the international community to intervene" to salvage the ceasefire. Mr Ariel Sharon, completing a visit to Italy, repeated that no outside intervention was necessary, merely a genuine effort by Mr Arafat to thwart Palestinian militants.
Yesterday, in an apparently premeditated Israeli killing, Mr Fawaz Badran, a Hamas militant, was blown up in a car in Tulkarm. Mr Badran's name was on a list of 60 alleged militants whom Israel has pleaded with Mr Arafat to arrest. Earlier yesterday, Mr Hezi Mualam, an official from the settlement of Kiryat Arba alongside Hebron, was shot dead by a Palestinian gunman. He and other city councillors had been visiting the scene of an earlier attack. The killing prompted hours of gun-battles in Hebron.
Also yesterday Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man who was spotted planting an explosive device near a settlement in Gaza.
The departing US ambassador, Mr Martin Indyk, urged Israel not to confront Mr Arafat directly, saying that the Palestinian leader could be prevailed upon to halt violence through "a combination of Israeli restraint, international pressure led by the United States, and the threat of terrible consequences if he doesn't, and the promise of a credible political process to redress Palestinian concerns if he does."
During his Italy trip, meanwhile, Mr Sharon warned world Jews that, if the conflict escalated, they would be affected too - presumably alluding to an anticipated upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks.