A lengthening list of Israeli leaders are voicing their disapproval, writesDavid Horovitz in Jerusalem.
On Saturday night, hours after he had survived an Israeli attempt to kill him and most of his top political and military colleagues, the Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin received a telephone call from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. According to Ismail Hanieh, an aide to Mr Yassin who was himself nearly killed in the same Israeli bombing of an apartment in Gaza City, Mr Arafat was phoning to offer his congratulations that the sheikh had been spared.
For the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, that telephone call merely underlined a long-held contention - not only are the Hamas political and military leadership essentially one and the same, but Mr Arafat is at one with them as well, effectively backing their avowed agenda of destroying Israel and blocking every initiative to prevent them from carrying out acts of terrorism.
In the nearly three weeks since a Hamas bomber killed 22 people and injured dozens more when blowing up a bus in Jerusalem, Israeli officials have reiterated time and again that the entire Hamas "hard core" - with no distinction between purported "political" and "military" leaders - are potential targets for "liquidation".
Saturday's failed attempt to kill Mr Yassin and a group that included Hamas's most notorious bombmakers, Mohammed Deif and Adnan al-Ghoul, reinforced a policy shift that had already seen 12 leading Hamas members killed in missile strikes in less than three weeks.
Mr Sharon restated yesterday that Hamas leaders remained "marked for death". But with no prospect of diplomatic progress, the question now is how long it will be before Mr Arafat is, if not quite marked "for death", then certainly marked for removal.
As far as Israel is concerned, Mr Arafat was the chief architect of the resignation of the moderate Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. Mr Arafat failed to back Mr Abbas's efforts to delegitimise the armed Intifada. Mr Arafat refused to relinquish to Mr Abbas's authority the thousands of men in most of the Palestinian security apparatuses who were needed to curb the bombers.
One of the most hawkish members of Mr Sharon's cabinet team, Mr Uzi Landau, declared yesterday that Mr Arafat should "not be immune from anything" - an intimation that Israel should consider liquidating the PA chief.
Mr Landau's is still a minority voice, with most of his ministerial colleagues, and all of Israel's intelligence chiefs and analysts, cautioning that this could unleash unprecedented violence, provoke tremendous international criticism and hugely discredit any future moderate leader in the eyes of the Palestinian people.
But a lengthening list of Israeli leaders are publicly demanding that Mr Arafat be expelled from the West Bank to Tunisia - whence he came almost a decade ago to oversee the now-collapsed Oslo process - or anywhere else that will take him.
"Arafat has to be thrown out of here," the Minister for Health, Mr Danny Naveh, declared yesterday.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Silvan Shalom, asserted that expulsion was now "inevitable" given Mr Arafat's "years of involvement in terrorism".
Just 10 years ago, an overwhelming majority of Israelis strongly supported the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's partnership with Mr Arafat. But Mr Shalom was echoing the new Israeli consensus when he asserted that Mr Arafat had relentlessly "done everything to cause the murder of Israelis and block any possibility" of progress at the peace table.
There are still those in the Israeli government, including Deputy Prime Minister Mr Ehud Olmert, who believe that keeping Mr Arafat under effective siege in Ramallah is better for Israeli interests than having him castigating Israel on a relentless tour of those many world capitals where he would still be welcomed.
But the likes of Mr Olmert are in the minority. Aides to Mr Sharon have indicated that, if there is one more major suicide bombing, the prime minister would throw his weight behind the hawks. It appears that only the Americans stand between Mr Arafat and a one-way ticket overseas.
In that light, the response by the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, yesterday to a US television interviewer's question about Mr Arafat's future abode was particularly telling. When asked if he favoured the enforced exile of the Palestinian symbol, he replied: "No, I would not support it". But then he added three little words: "At this time."