Hopes of peace left shattered by Israeli offensive

Yasser Arafat's presidential compound was a smoking pile of ruins yesterday, heaps of concrete rubble, the remains of buildings at crazy angles, fires burning amid the destruction.

In the midst of all this, the Palestinian leader was trapped inside his office in almost the only building still standing, encircled by Israeli tanks – one of which put a shell into the floor above Mr Arafat's head, reportedly showering the Palestinian President with rubble. Outside, army bulldozers made threatening manoeuvres.

The Israeli army said it wanted alleged militants inside to surrender. But there was no mistaking what this was about – it was retaliation, pure and simple, designed to humiliate Mr Arafat and show that he is at Israel's mercy. Retaliation for the savage suicide bombing of bus number 4 in Tel Aviv on Thursday, in which six people died, including a young Jewish man from Glasgow.

This weekend, hopes that the violence might be abating lie shattered, as they have been so many times before. Only four days ago, Israelis woke up with optimism in the air. There had been no suicide bombings, no shootings inside Israel, for an unprecedented six weeks. Commentators were beginning to suggest that the Palestinians had turned against the tactic of killing Israeli civilians as counter-productive. Many began to believe that Ariel Sharon's policy of reoccupying Palestinian towns and placing their populations under near-constant curfew had worked.

In the occupied territories, however, the killing and suffering never went away. While Israelis had a six-week lull in violence, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were still under curfew, unable to work or send their children to school. On Wednesday, Abd as-Salam Samren, an 11-year-old boy, was shot and killed by in Ramallah. Some reports said he had tried to throw a stone at an Israeli tank, others that he was breaking the curfew. These sorts of event have become so familiar they are barely reported.

Overnight had come the news that the so-called "Quartet" – the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, had drawn up a timetable for a peace plan based on President Bush's "vision" of a Palestinian state – a timetable that was not much to the Israeli government's liking, it must be said.

A few hours later on Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up when Israeli police tried to question him. One policeman was killed. Twenty-four hours after that came slaughter on Allenby Street in the heart of Tel Aviv; a suicide bomber struck on a bus, killing six people, including 19-year-old Yoni Jesner from Glasgow. Witnesses saw the bus career down the street with only part of the driver's body at the wheel.

It was clear that the Israeli government would be forced to act. The illusion that its policy was working had been torn apart. At an emergency cabinet meeting on Thursday night, they agreed to go after Mr Arafat.

Yet responsibility for the two bombings was claimed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It is known that Mr Arafat has little or no power to control either, or to order them to stop attacks on civilians. It was clear from Mr Arafat's plaintive call from the ruins yesterday just where attacks on civilians have brought him: "I reiterate my call to the Palestinian people and all our parties to halt any violent attacks inside Israel because Sharon exploits them as a cover to destroy the peace of the brave," he said in a statement.

Mr Arafat has been condemning suicide attacks for some time. The Israelis accuse him of not doing enough to stop them, though his security forces can barely act under Israeli military curfew.

Wednesday's suicide bombing came hours after the Palestinian Authority offered a phased ceasefire, which the Israelis rejected because, in the first phase, Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the occupied territories would still be subject to attack.

It is not at all clear whether that rejection triggered the wave of violence. Nor is it clear whether the Palestinian Authority could have delivered Hamas or Islamic Jihad compliance with a ceasefire. But talk of a ceasefire has been around for months, with increasing numbers of Palestinians arguing that suicide bombing has been counter-productive as a tactic.