Just four days after Israeli forces killed the radical leader of one large Palestinian group, the government yesterday denied that an explosion in Ramallah overnight represented an unsuccessful effort to assassinate another.
On Monday, missiles fired by an Israeli helicopter killed Abu Ali Mustafa, the secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - the most prominent Palestinian figure to die in 11 months of fighting.
In the early hours of yesterday, again in Ramallah, a mysterious blast rocked the building that is home to Mr Qais Abd al-Karim, a key leader of another radical PLO splinter faction, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A garage beneath the building was badly damaged, and fires broke out in some of the apartments.
But while the DFLP claimed that Israel had been attempting to strike at Mr Al-Karim, who was not at home at the time, and some eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Israeli helicopters in the vicinity, there were also suggestions that the explosion had come from within the building, and Israeli officials denied involvement.
Israel has openly acknowledged tracking down and killing several dozen Palestinians whom it alleges were central to attacks on its soldiers and civilians, and it has been robustly defending the assassination of Mr Mustafa, yesterday releasing new allegations that he was set to orchestrate a series of attacks on Israeli schools and kindergartens.
Israel's intelligence information on the movements of those it is hunting down has proved extraordinarily accurate, and it seems unlikely that it would have failed to ascertain whether its target was at home or not before blowing up his building.
One person Israel insists it is not targeting is Mr Yasser Arafat. The Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said in a newspaper interview yesterday that he would not "support a strike at Arafat. Not because he isn't involved in terror," the minister added, "but because I don't believe it would solve the problem."
Mr Arafat, currently in Durban at the UN conference on racism, is likely to hold talks next week with the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Peres, to try and widen the application of a ceasefire that has brought at least temporary tranquillity to the Beit Jala-Gilo shooting gallery on Jerusalem's southern edge.
Elsewhere, yesterday, it was conflict as usual: Israeli troops killed an alleged Palestinian sniper in Hebron, there were heavy clashes in Ramallah and Rafah and Jerusalem police intercepted two heavily-armed Palestinians allegedly about to open fire at a crossroads in the north of the city.