Having sustained unprecedented criticism this week from leading Palestinian activists and academics over the corruption of his regime, the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, has forced some of the critics to back down by jailing them and denying them lawyers.
On Sunday the 20 issued a leaflet that blamed Mr Arafat personally for having "opened the doors to corruption" and urged all Palestinians to protest against the "tyranny" that saw hundreds of millions of dollars in PA funds disappear each year.
The leaflet, which was circulated in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, went so far as to state that "some corrupted people" had sold out the Palestinian homeland, in signing peace accords with Israel, for their own gain.
The criticism was given particular weight by the fact that the signatories included nine members of the Palestinian legislative council, leading academics, members of Mr Arafat's own Fatah movement in the PLO and several veteran activists.
A furious Mr Arafat immediately ordered nine of the 20 arrested, placed two others under house arrest and began pushing for the parliamentary immunity of the nine legislators to be lifted so that they could be arrested also. "This is direct incitement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian leadership," said Mr Arafat's Planning Minister, Mr Nabil Sha'ath, himself a focus of previous corruption allegations.
Initially, the signatories insisted they would not back down. But yesterday four of those in jail signed a statement saying that they had not intended "to harm the name of the Palestinian leader", and one of the legislators issued a similar comment.
After this partial climb-down, an aide to Mr Arafat said that the nine detainees would be freed soon, and that the house arrest orders had been lifted.