Amid still more Middle East violence, including the explosion of a car-bomb planted by Islamic militants outside a school in central Israel, the former prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday urged the Israeli government to "defeat [Yasser] Arafat's terrorism" by forcing the Palestinian Authority "to the brink of collapse".
Mr Netanyahu was echoing calls made by Jewish settler leaders, who are warning that they will "take the law into their own hands" if the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, does not intensify military action against the Authority. At the Tuesday night funeral of Gilad Zal, one of three Israeli settlers shot dead on the West Bank roads by Palestinian gunmen that day, a minister representing Mr Sharon had a microphone taken out of her hands by mourning relatives, one of whom screamed that the government needed to "stop sitting around and eulogising our dead, and start fighting. We have the tanks, the missiles . . . It is our obligation to go to war."
Accusing Mr Yasser Arafat of "declaring war on Israel via unbridled terrorism", Mr Netanyahu said the Israeli army, to date, had "not used a fraction of one per cent of its strength". Israel needed to "attack the infrastructure" of the Authority, including its radio and TV stations, fuel stores and weapons caches", he said, "to make it clear to Arafat that if he continues, his terrorist regime will collapse".
Last week, Mr Sharon declared that he was ordering a quasi-ceasefire, under which his troops were to open fire only when their lives were in danger or when they could directly respond to sources of gunfire. In the Knesset yesterday, he defended this policy, saying that while he knew that "tempers are flaring", Israel was not fighting "only a security battle. We are forced to confront and win a difficult and complex political and diplomatic campaign".
Israeli military and political leaders say that Mr Arafat's TV and radio stations are inciting violence against Israel, that he is releasing known militants from Authority jails, and that gunmen loyal to him are directly involved in attacks on Israeli targets. Aides to Mr Arafat counter that Palestinian violence is a consequence of the Israeli occupation, settlement expansion, and eight months of Intifada conflict during which more than 470 Palestinians and 90 Israelis have been killed. In its annual report, released yesterday, Amnesty International charged that Israel has been using excessive force against the Palestinians during the conflict.
The Palestinian leadership has derided Mr Sharon's "ceasefire" stance as a ploy. In Copenhagen yesterday, Mr Arafat said that he would do all he could to prevent further violence, and that he remained "committed completely" to the peace process. He appealed to "all parties to stop the violence - from the F-16, to the bombs, to the armoured vehicles, to the rockets and all kinds of weapons".
Mr Arafat's host, the Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Goeran Persson, said new Israeli plans to build more homes at West Bank settlements were "a provocation".
Yesterday's car-bomb attack came outside a school in Netanya. Nobody was badly injured in the blast, which took place at about 4 p.m., when students would normally have been leaving the building. They had stayed late, however, to take an exam. The Islamic Jihad group admitted responsibility for the attack. Israeli police also defused a bomb placed on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, and another in northern Israel.
Israeli troops in Gaza opened fire on stone-throwers at the Rafah refugee camp early yesterday. A 14-year-old boy was shot in the chest, and was in critical condition in hospital.