As the Palestinian Authority braced for a heavy Israeli military assault yesterday, following the massing of troops and tanks outside several West Bank cities, Israel's government and its army appeared to be arguing with each other about what the troop reinforcements were intended to achieve.
Throughout Tuesday night, reinforcements continued to move to positions on the outskirts of Jenin, Bethlehem and other Palestinian-controlled areas - in what Israeli military analysts described as the precursor to a ground assault on the PA. Additional troops were posted at existing roadblocks on the edges of Palestinian cities.
The Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, indicated yesterday he was now expecting Israel to widen the confrontation, after 10 months of Intifada violence. "What is happening now with Israeli escalation shows their intention to continue their aggression," he said in Cairo, where Arab foreign ministers pledged $40 million in monthly funding for the PA.
However, at an emergency meeting of the Israeli cabinet yesterday morning, attended by the army's chief of staff, the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, insisted that this was not the idea - and rounded on his own military chiefs for, what he called, leaking and inflating the significance of the troop movements. "You get on with the fighting, and leave the policy-making to us," he was reported to have told Gen Shaul Mofaz, the chief of staff. To which Gen Mofaz reportedly responded: "We deployed so as to be able to respond as necessary, if ordered to do so. We didn't inflate anything." Speaking later in the day, Gen Mofaz said the army was "taking steps to prevent an escalation" of hostilities. "We don't want that," he said. Several of Mr Sharon's ministers made clear their hope that the military movements would lead to harsher measures against the PA. Mr Sharon said such action was going on already. Indeed, in Bethlehem yesterday, 15,000 Palestinians attended the funerals of four men killed on Tuesday in an Israeli helicopter strike. Israel alleges that at least two of them were preparing to stage a bombing in Jerusalem - which was firmly denied by Mr Jibril Rajoub, Mr Arafat's West Bank security chief. Meeting in London with British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, urged G8 leaders at their forthcoming summit to take a "harmonised position" against terrorism.
Israel's President, Mr Moshe Katsav, sparked a political furor yesterday, after agreeing to pardon Ms Margalit Har Shefi, who will now be freed on August 10 after serving two-thirds of a nine-month sentence for not preventing the 1995 murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin; the assassin, Yigal Amir, had told her of his assassination plans. Mr Rabin's daughter, Ms Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, the deputy minister of defence, said "with one telephone call she could have prevented the murder".