With a speed and disregard for judicial norms remarkable even by the standards of the Palestinian Authority, a special Palestinian "security court" in Jericho yesterday convicted two Hamas militants of assembling the explosive devices used in recent suicide bombings, and sentenced the pair to 15 years in prison with hard labour.
The entire trial lasted barely three hours; lawyers for the two complained that they were not admitted to the courtroom until the proceedings were completed; more than a dozen journalists who sought to cover the trial were not admitted at all.
The two men, Jasser Samara and Nassim Abu Rous, were arrested last week, following the discovery of a Hamas bomb-factory in a storeroom in the West Bank town of Nablus. Palestinian officials said they had confessed to making the five devices used in last summer's suicide bombings at Jerusalem's main vegetable market and the city's Ben-Yehuda Street pedestrian mall, in which 21 people were killed. They also reportedly confessed to recruiting the bombers.
The father of Nassim Abu Rous, who was allowed a brief meeting with his son, said the confessions were false, and that his son had lost considerable body weight, apparently during interrogation. He said the Palestinian president, Mr Yasser Arafat, had predetermined the result of the trial, and set the sentence.
The Palestinian Authority's habit of holding rapid, behind-closed-doors trials of terrorism suspects, routinely criticised by human rights groups, appears designed to prevent the allegations of torture that might result from the public presentation of the defendants after interrogation, and also to forestall any Israeli extradition requests.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, frequently calls for the Palestinians to extradite terrorism suspects for trial in Israel, but the Oslo peace accords provide for extradition only if the Palestinian Authority does not itself institute legal proceedings.
The discovery of the bomb-factory and the jailing of the two convicted bomb-makers is advantageously timed for Mr Arafat, coming just ahead of his and Mr Netanyahu's separate meetings this week with President Clinton. Mr Arafat, due at the White House on Thursday, will be able to cite these latest successes against the Islamic militants as proof of a commitment to fight terrorism, a commitment Mr Netanyahu plainly doubts.
Mr Netanyahu, who meets Mr Clinton tomorrow, is demanding a five-month "test period" prior to any further Israeli withdrawal from West Bank land, during which Israel would evaluate how well the Palestinians are honouring their obligations under the Oslo accords.
Mr Clinton is seeking much more rapid progress.
In a painstakingly orchestrated display of unity, the entire Israeli cabinet lined up at Ben-Gurion Airport yesterday to bid Mr Netanyahu bon voyage. That the cabinet's bickering hawks and doves all felt able to wish the Prime Minister a fond farewell underlines the fact that, despite numerous meetings in recent days, they have actually taken no binding decisions.
On board the prime ministerial aircraft, as it flew to Washington, representatives of the right-wing National Religious Party and the centrist Third Way were quoted as expressing diametrically opposite views on how the peace process would now have to proceed, each invoking threats to bolt Mr Netanyahu's faltering coalition.