Israel yesterday claimed to have traced to a village in the Nablus area four of the five Palestinian suicide bombers responsible for the deaths of 20 Israelis in recent Jerusalem blasts.
Israeli officials immediately made new accusations against Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for having failed to thwart the bombings in July and earlier this month. Israeli sources also warned that one more bomber might still be on the loose.
The four men are said to have come from the village of Assira, a Hamas stronghold in the West Bank, which has been blockaded by Israeli forces since the start of the week. The village is in an area under the day-to-day control of Mr Arafat's Authority, but under overall Israeli security control. A spokesman for Mr Arafat, Dr Ahmed Tibi, said yesterday that blame for failing to thwart the bombings consequently lay with Israel.
However, Israeli officials say the four men, known Hamas Islamic militants, were held by the Palestinian Authority in Nablus jail last year, and escaped because of the extraordinarily lax security. Subsequent Israeli calls for their re-arrest were ignored. The men were named on a list of more than 80 wanted Hamas activists delivered by Israel to the PA earlier this year.
Relatives of the alleged bombers insisted yesterday that Israel was lodging false accusations. But Israeli sources said they had carried out DNA testing, matching the bombers' corpses with DNA samples from the relatives, to confirm the identities.
Michael Jansen adds: Mr Arafat and his entourage have dismissed speculation that he is suffering from ill health following reports that he fainted last Friday while attending an Arab League meeting in Cairo. His physician, Dr Tibi, said that Mr Arafat suffered from the "normal ailments" of a man of 68 years but "is healthy for a man of his age".
However, Israeli observers noted a tremble of the lower lip and verbal hesitation in recent video footage. A Palestinian commentator, Prof Ghassan Khatib of Bir Zeit University, said Mr Arafat tended to "exhibit such signs of strain when he is overtired and under pressure," and the behaviour was "nothing new".
Mr Arafat's lifestyle is a legacy of his 30 years as the hunted leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. In 1992 he suffered a serious head injury when his aircraft crashed in the Libyan desert and a year later was operated on to remove a blood clot on the brain. Following the crash he had some memory loss, particularly with respect to his grasp of English, a language he learnt late in life.
If Mr Arafat were to be incapacitated by illness or to die, there could be a leadership battle for a successor. Initially his two top posts would be assumed by his closest associates: Mr Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen"), and Mr Ahmad Qurei. As Abu Mazen is currently seen as the second most powerful person in the leadership, it is expected that he would eventually succeed. But Abu Mazen has neither Mr Arafat's stature as liberation leader nor his grasp of PLO financial and administrative affairs, and would not be in a position to impose control over the disputatious Palestinian factions.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report