Israel yesterday vowed to respond "more forcefully" to future attacks on its civilians, and formally acknowledged that it was renewing a policy of "targeting" Palestinians who were alleged to be orchestrating violence against it.
At the same time government ministers, military chiefs and, most remarkably, even the outgoing US ambassador heaped unprecedented condemnation on the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat.
While Mr Arafat and his aides insist that they are trying to halt the Intifada violence that has raged for more than nine months, and blame "Israeli aggression" for complicating the task, Mr Arafat's critics in Israel accuse him not merely of complicity in the conflict, but of a more fundamental betrayal of the commitment to peace he made at the start of the peace process a decade ago.
Some aides to Mr Arafat insisted yesterday that a seven-day "period of calm" had now been completed, and that the time had come for the US to shepherd the sides towards resuming substantive peace talks. But the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, ridiculed the notion asserting there could be no negotiations until Mr Arafat halted "terrorism, violence and incitement".
Fifteen Palestinians and nine Israelis have been killed since a US-mediated "ceasefire" supposedly took effect three weeks ago. The dead include an Israeli man killed in the West Bank border area yesterday. Some reports said he had been shot dead by Palestinian gunmen, but Israeli officials said they were also investigating criminal motives. In Hebron, an activist from Mr Arafat's Fatah faction, alleged by Israel to be involved in violence, was badly wounded; the circumstances of this shooting were also unclear, with Palestinian officials blaming Israel, and the Israeli army denying involvement.
While the former Israeli minister, Mr Yossi Beilin, was holding talks with Mr Arafat in an attempt at diplomatic progress, Israeli ministers held a stormy four-hour cabinet session, during which several called for all-out war on Mr Arafat and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Mr Sharon derided cabinet moderates such as the Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, for having placed any faith in Mr Arafat, but at the same time rejected pressure for military action against the PA. Two ministers promptly announced they would henceforth boycott cabinet meetings.
The army's Chief of Staff, Gen Shaul Mofaz, who is not supposed to take a political stance, appeared to side with the hawks. He is reported to have asserted that Mr. Arafat was doing nothing to prevent the near-daily killing of Israeli settlers on West Bank roads. "What normal country would just go on with business as usual under a situation like this? Arafat deceives us every single day," he said.
But if Gen Mofaz's comments sounded out of line, they were nothing compared to remarks made by Mr Martin Indyk, the US ambassador who is shortly to complete his term here. Mr Indyk chided successive Israeli governments for pursuing settlement policies that had a "negative impact" on peace efforts, and said that the US opposed the assassinations policy.
However, he absolutely castigated Mr Arafat. The PA leader, he charged, had not honoured his pledge to work 100 per cent to prevent terrorism. And far worse, said Mr Indyk, "he has not forsworn violence, as he agreed to do back in September 1993, as a tool for achieving his objectives".
Asked whether he endorsed Mr Sharon's recent depiction of Mr Arafat as "Israel's Osama bin Laden", Mr Indyk said no, Mr Arafat was "the leader of the Palestinian people". Then he added wistfully: "There is nothing that Israel, or the United States for that matter, can do about that."