Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon stood firmly behind Israel's broad military operation in Palestinian-ruled areas despite pressure from the US and within his coalition to pull troops out, Reuters reports.
The incursion into or around most of the major Palestinian-controlled cities in the West Bank after the killing last week of an Israeli cabinet minister drew harsh language earlier yesterday from the State Department, which called for an immediate pull-out.
"Israel does not plan to take control of (Palestinian-ruled) areas, but the murder of (Tourism) Minister Rehavam Ze'evi crossed a red line and Israel, like any democratic country, is fulfilling its right to self-defence," Mr Sharon's office said in a statement last night.
He reiterated his demand that the Palestinian Authority "hand over cabinet minister Ze'evi's murderers and those who sent them, fight terror organisations and dismantle them".
Israeli diplomatic sources said the army would remain in its current positions to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants amid "severe warnings" of imminent assaults.
The Bush team yesterday publicly castigated the Israeli government over its presence in six Palestinian cities.
Washington demanded that the army immediately withdraw from all Palestinian areas and refrain from re-entering them, and it described as unacceptable the killing of Palestinian civilians. These have included a woman in a West Bank olive field on Monday and a man outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Sunday, both shot dead by Israeli troops, according to Palestinian officials.
A Palestinian bomb-maker was killed last night in an explosion which officials from the militant Islamic group Hamas blamed on Israel. Hamas officials said Mr Ayman Halaweh (26) was killed when a booby-trapped car he was travelling in exploded in the West Bank city of Nablus.
The verbal assault from Washington - leavened slightly by a demand that Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority arrest those who assassinated Mr Ze'evi - reflected the growing sense in the Bush Administration that Mr Sharon is working to topple the PA. Mr Sharon denies this, but also demands, as a condition for withdrawing the army from Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus, Qalkilya, Ramallah and Bethlehem, that Mr Arafat extradite Mr Ze'evi's killers - a step he knows the PA president will not take.
Members of the Labour Party, the main partner of Mr Sharon's Likud in the "national unity" coalition, yesterday made clear they would leave the government if it became evident that Mr Sharon intended to permanently reoccupy Palestinian territory and crush the PA. "We don't want a new conquest of the West Bank," said Mr Avraham Burg, the speaker of the Knesset. Mr Sharon was derisive. "What do they want to bolt for?" he asked yesterday.
"Do they favour a capitulation to terrorism?"
Mr Sharon has been quietly wooing a right-wing Orthodox party, the National Religious Party, into government in Labour's stead. This would mean that the National Unity party, the late Mr Ze'evi's far-right faction, would rescind its threat to leave.
Such a shift would also appease settler leaders and other right-wingers, who have been hinting broadly that if he does not confront Mr Arafat more harshly, they'll switch allegiance to the former Likud prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
In central Jerusalem last night, tens of thousands of right-wingers held a demonstration at which speakers demanded that Mr Sharon, in the words of the Settlers' Council head Mr Benny Kasriel, "throw out Arafat. and destroy the Palestinian Authority". Banners showed Mr Arafat and bin Laden, with the slogan "The Twins".