In a highly unusual move, apparently designed to deter future attacks, the Israeli army yesterday released footage which showed its forces killing a group of Palestinian gunmen late on Tuesday night as they attempted a raid on a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
However at the funerals of the five dead men yesterday, leaders of the Al-Aksa Brigades, who had sent them on their missions, vowed to continue such attacks until all settlements on occupied territory were dismantled.
Those were only some of yesterday's funerals, after a spate of violent incidents on Tuesday: Hadar Hershkowitz, a 15-year Israeli girl, was killed when she walked past a restaurant north of Tel Aviv as a suicide bomber detonated his explosives.
Hussein al-Matwi, an 8-year-old Palestinian boy, was killed at his tented home in Gaza when Israeli troops opened fire in what they said was a response to Palestinian shooting.
In a new effort to broker an end to the violence, the American Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, was quoted in an interview published by the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper as saying that President Bush would tomorrow unveil some kind of Middle East initiative, and that the Administration intended "continuing to work with [the Palestinian Authority President\] Yasser Arafat" despite Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's objections.
Mr Powell added that he planned to chair an international peace conference this summer, and that Mr Bush believed the path to resolving the conflict might involve the establishment of "a temporary state" of Palestine "as a transitional step".
Those comments contradict Mr Bush's public remarks, after a meeting with Mr Sharon on Monday, at which he indicated that the leadership of the Palestinian Authority did not inspire sufficient confidence to enable the convening of a peace conference, much less a firm timetable for Palestinian statehood.
Both during his talks with Mr Bush, and at a meeting yesterday in London with Britain's Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, Mr Sharon is said to have warned that his government would not survive an international effort to impose a peace deal, and that this would prompt new elections in Israel and thus set back any peace effort by six months.
Mr Sharon is said to have pointedly refrained from reiterating a previous pledge to Mr Bush not to harm Mr Arafat personally; perhaps more significantly, Mr Bush apparently demanded no such reassurance.
Mr Arafat is not only being accused daily by the Israeli government of inciting terrorism, and has been surrounded in his Ramallah HQ complex by Israeli troops and tanks (now pulling back), but is also being publicly criticised even by prominent loyalists such as his former Gaza security chief, Mr Mohammad Dahlan.
Mr Dahlan has lambasted the purported reform and slimdown of the PA cabinet as meaningless and says that Mr Arafat does not even appear to have noticed that he has resigned his position.
In a presumed attempt to raise Mr Arafat's standing and his spirits, PA television has been broadcasting a music video in his honour, assuring him that "Yasser, you are the triumphant", that "the occupation is defeated" and, over footage of a Palestinian funeral, that "martyrdom" is "a dignified death".