Mr Anthony Zinni, the retired Marine Corps general dispatched by the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, to "bulldoze" his way to an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, is set to abandon his mission and head home after this weekend.
In the two-and-a-half weeks Mr Zinni has spent here, about 100 people have been killed - Israelis and Palestinians in almost equal numbers. And Israel, having effectively severed ties with the Palestinian Authority over its failure to thwart Hamas suicide bombings and other attacks, is staging daily air raids on PA installations and sending troops ever deeper into Palestinian-held territory.
Mr Zinni is now holding talks in Jordan and Egypt, and is then expected to return to Washington. After Christmas, a decision is expected on whether he, or a lower-level official, will return.
President Bush complained yesterday that Mr Zinni's mission had been complicated by Mr Arafat's reluctance to arrest "killers and people who would derail the peace process". By nightfall on another day of heavy Israeli military activity, Israeli troops had killed eight Palestinians - five of them members of Mr Arafat's security forces, one a wanted Hamas activist. Most of them died in gun-battles as the soldiers moved into West Bank towns and villages. Israeli air strikes destroyed 15 buildings in Khan Younis; Israel said they had been used as cover for attacks on settlements and military positions. Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was inside a Gaza mosque damaged in a raid on an adjacent security installation. The sheikh is supposed to have been under PA house arrest; Israel said it had not been trying to hit him.
Israeli generals said last night that they had arrested about 50 militants from Hamas, Mr Arafat's Fatah faction and other groups. The purpose of their activities, said Gen Yitzhak Eitan, the army commander in the occupied West Bank, was to "prevent attacks and thwart terrorism" before the orchestrators could "leave their towns and villages".
However, the unstated purpose of the onslaught is to bring an end to Mr Arafat's rule. The government of the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, at a meeting that followed the killing of 10 Israelis by Hamas gunmen outside a West Bank settlement on Wednesday, declared that it considered Mr. Arafat "irrelevant" and would have no further dealings with him. The Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said yesterday he hoped "a dynamic of discourse" would develop among more moderate figures "from within the Pale stinian leadership". But the Israeli effort to oust Mr Arafat, who is currently confined to Ramallah, is attracting growing criticism - from moderate Arab states, the EU, some in the Bush Administration, and even from within Mr Sharon's coalition.
Several Israeli tanks and bulldozers stormed the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in the town of Rafah on the southern Gaza Strip border with Egypt, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said early this morning. The Israeli tanks penetrated the neighbourhood from three directions and opened fire with heavy machine guns, witnesses said.