AMID the acrimony and bitterness that have prevailed since peace talks broke down two months ago, a murderous dispute is intensifying over the very essence of the Israeli Palestinian conflict: the land.
In the past two weeks, two Palestinians reputed to have brokered private deals transferring land ownership from Palestinians to Israeli hands have been found murdered in the West Bank city of Ramallah, and a third land dealer, who had moved from the West Bank to Israel, has gone missing.
The deaths and the disappearance follow a decision by President Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to adopt an old Jordanian law that makes Arab land sales to Jews punishable by the death penalty.
The US State Department earlier condemned the law as being wrong and "contrary to what must prevail in the Middle East, which is peace and the spirit of peace".
Although Israel has arrested a high ranking Palestinian police officer in connection with one of the deaths, Mr Arafat's spokesmen insist that the Palestinian Authority has had no involvement in the killings.
But Mr Arafat has defended the newly imposed death penalty. "Israel has always confiscated land from Arabs," he said in an interview published on Wednesday. "How should we call our own who serve the Israeli policy of dispossession? They are isolated traitors, and we will act against them according to the law."
According to news reports here, Mr Arafat's security agencies have compiled a list of several hundred names of Palestinians said to have sold or brokered the sale of land to Jews, in the West Bank and in Israel, for possible prosecution under the law.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has called the new Palestinian law "monstrous", and wondered: "Imagine what would happen if Israel passed a law that said anyone who sold land to Arabs would be executed."
However, Israel has used what one Israeli commentator this week called "questionable legal manoeuvres" to block Arab purchases of land, and the 15 per cent of Israeli territory owned by the Jewish National Fund cannot legally be purchased by non Jews.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report.
Reuter adds:
The head of the atomic energy commission in the Israeli Prime Minister's office was quoted yesterday as saying years of democracy were needed in Arab states before Israel could give up its nuclear capability.
The newspaper, Haaretz, said the views of the nuclear chief, Mr Gideon Frank, dated from a talk he gave in Israel on the eve of national elections a year ago.