The murderous cycle of attack and counter-attack between Israelis and Palestinians was re-ignited yesterday, when gunmen from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction shot dead an Israeli motorist in the West Bank hours after Israel had apparently blown up a leading Fatah militant.
At the same time, Israel announced that it would no longer demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - but bulldozers sent by Jerusalem city hall knocked down nine homes it said had been built illegally by Palestinian residents in a northern city neighbourhood.
Israel neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the explosion that killed Raed Karmi, leader of Fatah's so-called "al-Aqsa Brigades" gunmen in Tulkarm, in that West Bank city yesterday morning. But aides to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon noted that Karmi had acknowledged killing two Israeli men at a café in Tulkarm last year, and said he had also orchestrated seven other killings, most of them drive-by shootings on West Bank roads.
Noting that the Palestinian Authority had claimed Karmi was in jail, Mr Sharon's spokesman said: "Again we confront a situation in which the Palestinian Authority claims that an activist is arrested when in fact he is free."
Israel had attempted to kill Karmi last September. If, as seems almost certain, its forces orchestrated his killing yesterday, this would constitute the first such "targeted" attack by Israel for a month - since the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat issued a ceasefire call and the al-Aqsa Brigades said they would honour it. Yasser Abed-Rabbo, the Palestinian Minister of Information, said the killing was "worse than playing with fire," since it constituted an "invitation to suicide bombings".
As word of Karmi's death spread hundreds of people marched in Tulkarm to demand revenge, and the al-Aqsa Brigades issued a statement declaring: "The so-called ceasefire is a joke and is cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. Revenge is coming." And yesterday afternoon, an Israeli was killed and a second was wounded in a drive-by shooting not far from Tulkarm; the al-Aqsa Brigades admitted responsibility. There were also several other shooting attacks on Israeli cars in the West Bank last night.
Buffeted by international condemnation over last week's demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah - including criticism from the European Union, whose current president, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, is visiting the region - Israel's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced that no more such demolitions would take place.
"We've learned a lesson," he said. Such actions "do more harm than good". Mr Peres claimed that Mr Sharon fully backed this position. Mr Sharon was equivocal, saying only that Israel would act in accordance with its security considerations.
In Jerusalem's Isawiya neighbourhood, bulldozers tore down nine Palestinian homes - out of 19 initially targeted for demolition. The Supreme Court issued orders preventing the demolition of the other 10.
Jerusalem's City Council said the homes had been built illegally; residents countered that the city consistently refused to give them building permits.
Also yesterday, the Israeli Border Police opened an investigation into the beating by its forces of a large group of Palestinians who were arrested on Sunday in Jaffa for being inside Israel without the necessary permits. Israel Radio reported that 60 Palestinians were tied up in pairs and forced to lie on the floor of a bus carrying them out of Israel.