MIDDLE EAST: Less than a year and a half ago, during a confrontation at his Ramallah office, the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, pulled a gun on his security chief, Mr Jibril Rajoub, and had to be urged by some of his colleagues - who screamed "Don't do it" - to let it drop harmlessly to the floor.
A few months later, Mr Rajoub, a bulky, Marlon Brando-esque figure, was fired by Mr Arafat as head of Palestinian "Preventive Security," a job which had effectively made him the second-most powerful Palestinian leader.
Now, in his continuing efforts to complicate life and leadership for Mr Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the man he reluctantly endorsed as PA Prime Minister in the spring, Mr Arafat has mended his fences with Mr Rajoub and appointed him "national security adviser" to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, a post in which Mr Rajoub will plainly constitute competition to Mr Abbas's Minister of Security, Mr Mohammad Dahlan, a potential rival for the future leadership of the Palestinians.
The complex pattern of appointments and rivalries has a simple basis: Mr Arafat is deeply reluctant to give up control to Mr Abbas of the various Palestinian security apparatuses. Israel and the United States have made the reform of these dozen or so networks, and their engagement in a concerted effort to disarm Hamas and other extremist groups, a condition for diplomatic progress. Mr Abbas has battled for months to win authority over three of the networks that still report to Mr Arafat, saying that without such power he cannot confront Hamas. And the Rajoub appointment indicates that Mr Arafat is in no mood to back down.
The February 2002 pistol-pulling episode reportedly stemmed from Mr Arafat's ire at the escape from one of Mr Rajoub's prison facilities of a group of Islamic extremists. Ironically, however, most of their frequent run-ins revolved around Mr Rajoub's frustration at Mr Arafat's refusal to let him mount a crackdown on the Hamas bombers and gunmen. Some analysts noted yesterday that Mr Rajoub has far more in common with Mr Abbas and Mr Dahlan, and their publicly announced goal of ending the armed intifada, than with Mr Arafat, who has evinced no such public desire.
But Mr Rajoub is also a personal rival of Mr Dahlan's, and presumably welcomes the opportunity to return to a position of authority.
A senior PA legislator, Mr Sufian Abu Zeideh, said last night that the power struggle highlighted by the appointment of Mr Rajoub was "the least of our problems," given this week's termination by Hamas and Islamic Jihad of the intifada ceasefire, and their threats to mount a "painful and quick" response to Israel's recent killings of several key Hamas figures, itself a response to last Tuesday's Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem. (At the funerals yesterday for four Hamas men killed in an Israeli missile strike on Sunday night, speakers warned Israel's Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon to "prepare the coffins.") But the jockeying for power is bound to hamper any fresh effort by Mr Abbas to restore calm.