HOURS after - Mr Benjamin Netanyahu left for a first prime ministerial visit to Europe yesterday, a furore broke out in Jerusalem about the opening of an underground tunnel in the heart of the disputed Old City of Jerusalem.
Hundreds of Palestinians hurled stones down on Jewish worshippers from the Temple Mount plaza, others clashed with police, and the Palestinian Authority president, Mr Yasser Arafat, called the opening of the tunnel "a crime against our holy places".
The tunnel was used over 2,000 years ago to supply water to the second Jewish temple. It was reopened yesterday, according to Jerusalem's Jewish Mayor, Mr Ehud Olmert, purely as a "tourist" route taking visitors 500 yards from the Western Wall, the outer retaining wall that is all that remains of the second temple (and constitutes Judaism's holiest site), to the Via Dolorosa, the route Christ followed on his way to crucifixion.
Israeli archaeologists have been excavating the tunnel for the past 12 years, but the final section was dug out secretly with Mr Netanyahu's explicit approval late on Monday night. The Palestinians, seeing the tunnel project as pre-empting talks on the final status of Jerusalem, organised an immediate strike.
The Arab League into issued a protest statement which lamenting the obliteration of "Islamic historic facets" of Jerusalem.
The protests underlined the growing Palestinian mistrust of Mr Netanyahu and his polices a mistrust fostered by the government's failure, almost four months after winning elections, to take any substantive steps to advance the peace process.
Most significantly, the Israeli troop withdrawal from Hebron has still not been implemented a fact that led to demonstrations in that West Bank city as well.
Mr Netanyahu's peace paralysis is also worsening his ties with neighbouring Arab states. He is now involved in a deepening war of words with Egypt fighting flares up almost daily in Lebanon, where two Hizbollah gunmen died in clashes yesterday Syrian troop mobilisations are being monitored anxiously by Israel Qatar has postponed the scheduled opening of a trade office in Tel Aviv and Morocco's King Hassan lamented yesterday that the entire reconciliation process was now in crisis.
. The Palestinian cabinet chaired by Mr Arafat last night called for a general strike today in protest at the tunnel.