With Israel and the Palestinians on the brink of a new deal to revive the peace process, fears are growing of a wave of Hamas violence aimed at torpedoing progress.
Israeli police said last night they believed a young Israeli couple, found brutally murdered on Monday not far from the border with the West Bank, had been killed for "nationalist motives" - a euphemism for an attack by Arabs. The police said also they had recently arrested several suspected Islamic militants who had crossed illegally into Israel.
And Jordanian officials said their current crackdown on Hamas (see story below) has come in response to pleas from the Palestinian Authority - which fears that a further wave of attacks would scupper the imminent Israeli hand-over of further occupied West Bank territory.
While the two murdered Israelis were being buried yesterday afternoon, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were renewing their efforts to strike the new peace deal. Privately, sources on both sides expressed confidence that the last gaps would be closed in time for a formal signing ceremony, to be attended by the US Secretary of State, Mrs Madeleine Albright, in Egypt in the next few days.
Leaked drafts of the new deal - an amended version of last October's Wye River accord - indicate that Israel will withdraw from anther 11 per cent of the West Bank in a phased process to be completed next January or February. The two sides will then enter intensive talks on all outstanding issues, with the Israeli government suggesting December 2000 as a target date for a permanent peace treaty. Under the original Oslo accords, this permanent deal was to have been signed by May of this year.
Despite foreign reports that Israel's Prime Minister Mr Ehud Barak is now offering to formally recognise an independent Palestinian state early next year, while shelving discussion of such tendentious issues as the final status of Jerusalem and refugee rights of return, the leaked drafts contain no hint of any such offer.
The sides are still arguing about prisoner releases - with Israel ready to free 300 "security prisoners" from its jails, and the Palestinian negotiators insisting on the release of 650.
It seems that Israel is prepared to free some prisoners with "blood on their hands" - mainly supporters of President Yasser Arafat whose convictions predate the 1993 start of the Oslo process, but no members of Hamas or other groups still opposed to reconciliation.
Guerrilla shelling wounded a pro-Israeli militiaman yesterday while he was on duty inside Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone. The South Lebanon Army member was slightly hurt by mortars.