Rehavam Ze'evi once said that he slept with a gun under his pillow, so conscious was he of the Arab enemies he had made with his hawkish views. But he apparently declined requests by the Shin Bet security service that he be permanently accorded a bodyguard, insisting that a government minister should not require such protection when going about his business inside the state of Israel.
That made Mr Ze'evi an inviting target for the gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who shot him dead at close range yesterday morning, outside his room in Jerusalem's Hyatt Hotel.
Last night the violence continued as a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and wounded two Israeli soldiers near the Gaza Strip yesterday, an Israeli army spokeswoman said. The bomber blew himself up next to an army jeep near Kibbutz Nahal Oz on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip.
An elder statesman of Israeli politics, junior only to Foreign Minister Mr Shimon Peres in the Israeli Knesset, Mr Ze'evi (75) was a rather soft-spoken and unfailingly courteous man, with an almost skeletal appearance - which is why, from his youth, he was nicknamed "Gandhi". But the nickname was misleading.
The young Mr Ze'evi was a fighter - in the pre-state Palmach and Haganah, and then in the Israeli defence forces, where he rose to the rank of major-general. And after a spell that included serving as adviser on counter-terrorism to Prime Minister Mr Yitzhak Rabin, (whose life was also cut murderously short in 1995 by an extremist Jewish assassin), Mr Ze'evi then began a political career with similar fighting spirit, planting himself firmly on the far-right of the Israeli spectrum.
An unrelenting opponent of all Israeli efforts to reach an accommodation with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, he once complained to this correspondent of the debilitating effect on Israel of attempting such partnerships. "If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas," he said.
Rather than a two-state solution based on territorial compromise, Mr Ze'evi advocated the "transfer" of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to neighbouring Arab states. Although Israel's Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon never used the same language, there were periods when he endorsed at least aspects of Mr Ze'evi's ideology, asserting, for instance, that Palestinian aspirations to statehood ought to be realised in Jordan, rather than the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Jerusalem.
Mr Sharon has recently been expressing support for a Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Mr Ze'evi was so outraged by this shift, and by the prime minister's apparent readiness to enter into negotiations with Mr Yasser Arafat, that he resigned as Minister of Tourism in Mr Sharon's government on Sunday. The resignation had been scheduled to take effect yesterday.
Far from negotiating with Mr Arafat, Mr Ze'evi reportedly wanted him sent back into exile, or even assassinated. Mr. Sharon's government had steadfastly resisted any such notion, but in the wake of the shooting of Mr Ze'evi yesterday, several ministers were believed to be proposing it.
Deaglβn de BrΘad·n writes: The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, "strongly condemned" the assassination of Mr Ze'evi and urged that every effort be made to bring the perpetrators to justice. In a statement last night he said: "Such acts are designed to obstruct efforts to achieve a lasting peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people." Leaders on both sides should not allow "the enemies of the Peace Process" to exercise a veto on progress, he added.
Britain's Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair condemned the "contemptible" assassination of Mr Ze'evi and urged restraint from both sides involved in the Middle East peace process.