Israel yesterday began a sustained military assault on Palestinian installations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that seems designed to bring about the collapse of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
Armed with a declaration from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government that it now regarded the Authority as "an entity that supports terrorism", the army used jets and helicopters to hit buildings used by Mr Arafat's colleagues, his police and security apparatuses, and offices of his Force 17 bodyguard unit, in eight locations.
A raid on a Ramallah police building saw a missile hit a wall, just a few dozen metres from where Mr Arafat was working. The army also moved tanks and other forces onto Palestinian territory in the West Bank cities of Nablus, Tulkarm and Ramallah.
Three Palestinians were killed in the course of the day, including a 16-year-old Palestinian boy and a policeman in Gaza, and a gunman in a clash in Nablus. Twenty people were badly hurt.
Marwan Barghouti, a leader of Mr Arafat's Fatah faction in the West Bank, said Israel was trying to assassinate the Palestinian Authority president. Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian negotiator, accused Mr Sharon's government of "exercising terror. They're destroying the peace process and now they're destroying the Palestinian Authority," he said. Mr Arafat himself issued a plea for international intervention.
Aides to Mr Sharon denied there was any intention to "harm" Mr Arafat "personally". The aim, they said, was to "put pressure" on the Palestinian leader to put a halt to a series of attacks on Israeli targets, which culminated at the weekend in three Palestinian suicide bombings that killed 25 civilians in Jerusalem and Haifa. However, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, indicated the majority of his ministerial colleagues were now effectively seeking to topple the Palestinian Authority, and "in effect to rely only on power, without political hope."
Having failed to persuade them to give Mr Arafat a breathing space in which to demonstrate a readiness to mount a genuine crackdown on Hamas and other extremist groups, Mr Peres walked out of the overnight cabinet meeting, together with his Labour Party colleagues.
The remaining ministers voted overwhelmingly to brand Mr Arafat's Authority a supporter of terrorism and to designate the Tanzim and Force 17 groups loyal to Mr Arafat as "terrorist organisations." Mr Peres is convening his party today to decide on whether to leave the government, but Mr Sharon would retain majority support in parliament.
Although Israeli military officials indicate the onslaught will escalate "significantly" in the coming days, the US has issued no public calls for Israeli restraint.
Indeed, while US Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to Mr Arafat to "do a lot more than we have seen so far", to counter the militants, he said mildly of Mr Sharon that he was "responding in a way that he believes is appropriate to defend his people and to defend his country." President Bush, announcing he was freezing Hamas assets in the US, compared the group to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, with what some aides to Mr Sharon sought to describe as an implicit extended comparison between Mr Arafat's Authority and the Taliban. The EU, by contrast, urged Israel not to destroy the Authority. A spokesman said Israel needed it "to fight extremists and as a partner for peace" .
Mr Arafat complained yesterday that Mr Sharon "doesn't want me to succeed in reining in extremists."
Meanwhile, in an unusually strongly-worded statement, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, expressed his deep concern at the extent and severity of the Israeli retaliation, saying "we see it as reinforcing and driving a vicious circle of attack and reprisal".
He had written to Mr Peres condemning the attacks on Israeli civilians, but sent a second letter yesterday, pointing out that the destruction of the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority could not help them deal with the men of violence, as demanded by Israel.