Palestinians at an East Jerusalem refugee camp bitterly protested at the demolition of 12 homes by the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem City Council yesterday. And Israel bitterly protested over Palestinian failure to thwart a Gaza suicide bombing, on a day that saw relations between the two warring sides plunge to new depths.
Jerusalem's right-wing Mayor Ehud Olmert acknowledged that the decision to raze a dozen homes, which were in the process of being built without permits at the Shuafat refugee camp - the largest campaign of such demolitions in years - had been carried out without the owners being granted the usual opportunity to file an appeal.
"There is no reason to give lawbreakers a reason to continue violating court orders and to build illegally," he said, adding that all of the families affected still had other places to live. "These are people building wildly on public lands," he said.
Palestinians officials, describing the demolitions as "a serious provocation", countered that the city council was extremely reluctant to grant permits, since it was determined to minimise Palestinian population growth in the city.
As the bulldozers went to work, some protesters tried to block their path, while others chanted slogans in support of the Hizbullah and Hamas militant groups.
Hours earlier, in the Gaza Strip, Hamas had been implementing a pledge issued on Sunday to resume suicide bombings of Israeli targets. A Hamas activist, later named as Nafez al-Nazer, blew himself up in a truck packed with explosives as he approached an Israeli army position.
Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said that the bombing demonstrated that "there are many martyrs on call who are waiting to defend themselves and sacrifice themselves for Palestine." Significantly, the bomber was a father of two. Most suicide bombings have been carried out by single, unemployed men, who were deemed easier to indoctrinate.
Israel claimed that it had given Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority detailed information in advance about the attack. "The Palestinian police didn't do anything about it," said a government spokesman.
In another attack, in the West Bank overnight, a member of an elite Israeli army unit was killed by a roadside bomb.