NOT A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER: The Israelis have pulled out of Ramallah.Steven Den Beste explains why their current tactics vis-a-vis Arafat are probably mistaken:

What they said to him tonight was this:
We are no longer interested in public displays of horror at the bombings and empty denunciations of them. Offers of arrests and imprisonment of the attackers in Palestinian revolving-door prisons do not wash. The only thing we will accept will be a cessation of attacks, so from now on when we suffer, you will also suffer personally, Chairman Arafat. We're going to visit you wherever you are after every attack from now on and shell the place. We won't be directly trying to kill you, but we're not going to try very hard not to, either, and one of these times you're going to get your wish and become a martyr. But if indeed that is not your wish, then the only way to prevent it is to actually stop the bombings. Nothing less will do. You're playing Russian Roulette now, and every bombing attack on us from now on represents a chance that you'll hit the jackpot and get your 72 virgins.
It isn't going to work. Those who are planning the bombing don't give a shit what Arafat says, or whether he's harmed. That's the reality: Arafat only controls some of the bombers. The only way he actually can stop the attacks is to start a Palestinian civil war by committing his forces to a real attempt to suppress Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
...And in the mean time, this represents yet another attempt by Israel to attempt to deal with Arafat. It still places Arafat at the center of the stage, as the one essential man in the diplomatic circus. It embraces the fallacious idea that it is still possible to accomplish something by communicating with Arafat, even if the communication is delivered with tank gunfire.
Tonight was "diplomacy by other means" but it was still an attempt to deal diplomatically with Arafat. No progress will be made until Arafat is actually off the stage, one way or another.

Den Beste also makes the best case for killing Arafat, at long last.