As the Israeli government agonised last night over whether to resume peace negotiations with Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority just a day after two Israelis had been murdered in the West Bank town of Tul Karm, scepticism was growing over whether Mr Arafat still exercises the kind of control over his own people necessary to implement any deal.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Taba in Egypt had been making "progress in all the committees" tackling the key issues of dispute, Mr Nabil Sha'ath, the Palestinian Planning Minister, said yesterday. And while Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, was still meeting last night with senior colleagues to discuss whether to resume those talks, the likelihood is strong that they will pick up today or tomorrow - after today's funeral of the two Israelis from Tel Aviv who were killed on Tuesday.
Mr Fawaz Abu-Hussein, the Israeli Arab friend of the two murdered men, Tel Aviv restaurant partners Motti Dayan and Etgar Zeituni, yesterday tearfully recounted the details of the murders, explaining that the three of them had finished a meal at the Abu Nidal Restaurant in Tulkarm when three masked men, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, entered and forced them out of the restaurant. "I tried to speak to them [the gunmen] in Arabic," he said. "They shot at me."
He said he did everything to prevent the gunmen from abducting his friends - "I tried to defend them with my body; I'm sorry, so sorry" - but was powerless. The pair, co-owners of a restaurant named "Yuppies" on Tel Aviv's Shenkin Street - in probably the most bohemian and left-wing district in the country - were driven off, shot, and left by the roadside.
The Palestinian Authority said yesterday that it had arrested four people in connection with the killings. A Hamas claim of responsibility was not being taken too seriously by either Israel or the PA, and there were reports in Israel that three of the four suspects were linked to Mr Arafat's Fatah movement.
However, Israeli intelligence sources and some officials believe that, in the wake of the past four months of violence, the high death toll and the growing economic crisis in the PA-controlled areas, Fatah activists and other gangs are now becoming increasingly emboldened, dangerous, and derisive of Mr Arafat's rule.
The intermittent blockades by Israel of individual West Bank cities, these sources believe, has boosted the strength of local warlords and gang leaders. Mr Arafat, according to some reports, is fearful to enter Ramallah, where an Israeli teenager was shot dead last week, having been lured there via the Internet. And the killing in Gaza earlier this month of the PA's TV chief, Hisham Miki, a close associate of Mr Arafat's, underlined the potency of the threat. Although some Palestinian officials initially tried to point a finger of blame at Israel for Mr Miki's killing by masked gunmen at a Gaza hotel, the PA has since seized the dead man's considerable assets, and his death is now widely regarded as a unilateral punishment for his alleged corruption.
Mr Yossi Sarid, leader of the leftwing Meretz party and a participant in the Taba talks, acknowledged yesterday that Mr Arafat might well no longer have full control of the PA areas. But even if the PA was able to partially implement a peace deal, he said, it would help prevent further killings. Mr Gideon Ezra, a Knesset member from the opposition Likud party, however, countered that, in holding talks with the Palestinians during so violent a period, the Israeli government was essentially inviting more killings.