ISRAEL: Mr Ahmed Korei, the designated successor to Mr Mahmoud Abbas as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, has yet to take office. But in the wake of yesterday's suicide bombing east of Tel Aviv - followed by another later in Tel Aviv - Israeli ministers and spokesmen were dismissing him as a puppet of the reviled PA President, Mr Yasser Arafat.
They asserted that his appointment meant the end of all hope of resuscitating the US and European-backed "road map".
Mr Korei was an Arafat stooge, said Mr Gideon Sa'ar, a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's governing Likud party. The hawkish Minister of Internal Security, Mr Tsahi Hanegbi, preferred the term "marionette". The "road map" had been intended to offer the Palestinians the chance of a normal life, Mr Hanegbi said. But the failure of Mr Abbas's declared bid to end the armed intifada, and the advent of Mr Korei, "represents the end of the effort at reform [in the PA\]," he said. "Arafat has recrowned himself as the man responsible for leading the Palestinians from tragedy to tragedy. The PA has surrendered to Arafat, and relinquished its destiny to the man at the head of the hierarchy of terror."
Hours before the blast, Mr Korei had given interviews in which he said he hoped to achieve a full Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, rather than the fragile, seven-week internal Palestinian "hudna" that collapsed in mid-August. He also said he might not take up the post, if he was subject to the dictates of Israel.
"I have told the Americans, Arabs, Russians . . . everybody," he said in a Reuters interview, "that this situation cannot continue. I will not be under the Israeli dictate - 'do this and don't do that' . . . I want the Israelis to work for peace, not by the logic of power and force. No, \ by the logic of wisdom and co-existence."
When he resigned Mr Abbas blamed Israel, the US and Mr Arafat for his failure - Israel for continuing the targeted strikes on intifada kingpins and for failing to ease living conditions for ordinary Palestinians, the Americans for failing to intervene, and Mr Arafat for the lack of rhetorical and practical assistance to weaken Hamas. Mr Korei has limited his criticisms to Israel and the US, and far from indicating opposition to Mr Arafat, demanded that Israel change its attitude to "the elected president of the Palestinian people".
Even before the suicide bombing, that had prompted the Israeli army chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, to speak of "an attempt now to reverse the process" of reform in the PA.
And the Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Shaul Mofaz, had vowed: "We are not going to co-operate with people who are doing what Arafat says." Although the Bush administration shares Israel's withering assessment of Mr Arafat and refuses to deal with him, it is apparently more open-minded on Mr Korei, and has been critical of Israel's newly intensified policy of targeting Hamas leaders.
On the Israeli left, too, Mr Yossi Beilin, the former justice minister, called the policy a mistake, arguing after yesterday's bombing that it merely perpetuated the violence. But Mr Hanegbi said there was no peaceful way to "deter terrorism".
Rather, he said, "you have to reduce the enemy's ability to carry it out". In recent weeks, he said: "We have liquidated a considerable part of the Hamas leadership, and that has caused a dramatic fall" in attacks. "We will keep killing them," he said, "wherever we can."