Three Palestinians were killed by Israeli army gunfire in the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday, as Israel maintains its reoccupation of the West Bank and a familiar stalemate blocks diplomatic progress.
On one side of the diplomatic impasse are Israel and the United States, adamant that Mr Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority leadership colleagues are tainted by terrorism and resolute in demanding that the Palestinians oust them as a precondition for a return to substantive negotiations.
"It's not just a question of one man," the Bush Administration's National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, said yesterday. "It's an entire political regime that needs to be changed."
On the other side, as so often, are Arab states and much of Europe, both resentful of what they regard as intolerable intervention in internal Palestinian affairs, and wary of the instability Mr Arafat's departure might cause.
Nobody but Mr Arafat "can hold a dialogue with Israel", the Egyptian President, Mr Hosni Mubarak, said yesterday. "Leaders who are parachuted on to their people are considered traitors," he went on. "Israel's insistence on ousting Arafat will lead to chaos in the Palestinian territories and to more violence at home and abroad."
In the middle is Mr Arafat himself, continuing to insist, quite ludicrously, that because President Bush did not specifically condemn him by name when urging the Palestinians in a June 24th speech to elect a different leadership, the president wasn't actually referring to him at all. Nevertheless, Mr Arafat may be starting to recognise that the US demand for him to go is unequivocal.
In comments yesterday, he indicated that he did not plan to resign as president of the PA. "I'm not ready to betray the people who elected me," he said. But he did not commit himself to running again for the post in elections he has scheduled for January.
The Bush Administration's markedly increased empathy for Israel, as reflected in that speech two weeks ago, now sees the White House silent as Israel's full-scale reoccupation of every West Bank city bar Jericho stretches onwards with no end in sight. By contrast, during April's military operation in the West Bank - also launched following a series of suicide bombings - Mr Bush was consistently pressing Israel to withdraw its troops. Even this week's police closure of the East Jerusalem university and offices of the leading Palestinian moderate Mr Sari Nusseibeh, bitterly criticised by Labour members of Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's own coalition, prompted only a mild protest from Washington.
Quite apart from the acute discomforts and indignities for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of the ongoing pressure-cooker curfews in the cities, Israel's efforts to thwart further suicide bombings are producing intermittent armed confrontations and loss of life.
In the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, two Palestinians - one a policeman, the other a teenager - were killed by Israeli gunfire yesterday morning. Palestinian sources said the troops had opened fire on a police station. The army said its troops came under fire when entering the town. Meanwhile in Jenin, at the northern tip of the West Bank, a Palestinian journalist, Imad Abu Zahra, died after being shot on Thursday.