An Israeli cabinet minister, Mr Danny Naveh, and his family are spending this weekend not at their home at Shoham near the West Bank border, but at a rented apartment "somewhere in the centre of Israel". The Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, has also been kept away from his Tel Aviv suburban residence on occasions in recent weeks. And the Infrastructure Minister, Mr Avigdor Lieberman, was recently airlifted out of his home, on the West Bank settlement of Nokdim.
Combined with the October 17th assassination in Jerusalem of the Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze'evi, these enforced temporary relocations of Israeli leaders underline how seriously the Security Services now take threats by Palestinian militants to target politicians in the intensifying intifada.
And beneath the urgent security concerns, they also raise the question of whether Israel's continuing, publicly acknowledged killings of alleged intifada kingpins are causing more harm than good to Israeli interests. The US has condemned what Israel describes as its "targeted hits". Palestinian Authority leaders have branded the killings "extra-judicial executions".
Israeli commentators, too, are now expressing reservations, and noting that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose gunmen killed Mr Ze'evi, said it was avenging the killing by Israel of its leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, in a rocket attack in Ramallah.
While Israeli officials insist that Mr Mustafa was a "terrorist," directly involved in planning attacks, his supporters are adamant that he was a "political leader" and that, in killing him, Israel essentially invited counter-attacks on its politicians.
Writing in the Ha'aretz newspaper yesterday, the commentator Yoel Marcus asserted that Mr Ariel Sharon's entire policy of "liquidating key Palestinians involved in the intifada has proven a boomerang".
While Israel moves to protect its Jewish leaders, the Attorney-General, Mr Elyakim Rubinstein, is getting ever tougher on Arab legislators: a Knesset member, Mr Talab a-Sana, was questioned by police on Thursday, for allegedly justifying as "legitimate" a shooting attack in Tel Aviv in August, in which several soldiers were injured.
A second Arab deputy, Mr Azmi Bishara, was stripped of his parliamentary immunity on Wednesday, to face prosecution for expressing public support for attacks on Israeli civilians.
The tit-for-tat daily violence in the West Bank continued yesterday, with an Israeli mother-of-four, Ms Hadas Abutbul, gunned down in her car near her home settlement of Mevo Dotan.
Militants from Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO claimed responsibility, asserting that they were avenging Israel's killing of two colleagues earlier in the week.
In Gaza, Israeli troops shot dead a deaf Palestinian man, Mr Samir Abu Halib, at a roadblock, Palestinian officials said. Israeli troops said they fired at the legs of a man who ignored calls to halt as he approached their position.