arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Yasser Arafat had the air of an ageing thespian stepping out of the wings to savour a curtain call and drink in the warmth of his fans before taking a triumphant bow. But, as he strutted anew on the world stage, the applause was patchy and so were the crowds.

His aides and bodyguards thronged loyally round him, no less excited than they had been the night before, when Israel withdrew its tanks and snipers to end the month-long siege of his crumbling and bullet-spattered compound, allowing them to leave.

The press engulfed him, lapping up his every word and chasing his convoy of Jeeps and Mercedes, still caked in a month's worth of dust. He flashed V-for-victory signs and led prayers before a makeshift grave at the hospital – the only place officials could find to bury 15 people who were killed in the first few days after the Israeli army's arrival, when the town was under curfew.

He inspected the Ministry of Education, peering indignantly at the computers smashed by Israeli soldiers, and held forth about the "crimes against religion" committed by Israel in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity – where another Palestinian was shot dead yesterday. He talked, as ever, of how he wanted to return to "the peace of the brave" that he sought to create with his "partner" Yitzhak Rabin.

But as the Palestinian leader – the "president" of an unborn and increasingly unlikely state – travelled around Ramallah with his entourage of Palestinian Authority officials, he received no hero's welcome. There was ambivalence and weariness, uncertainty – and even resentment.

Worn down by weeks of living under an Israeli military curfew, and depressed by the scale of the destruction the Israeli army left behind, this West Bank town of 40,000 did not cheer much at Mr Arafat's sudden appearance. His popularity, which blossomed during his months of confinement, seemed to have faded, blighted by the public's view that he has made a murky and dishonourable deal in return for his release.

Palestinians on the streets yesterday were subdued. They have two principal objections to the agreement, brokered by the United States and Britain. There is also deep distrust that any deal made in the current atmosphere of ill will, especially with Ariel Sharon, would hold for long.

On the second point, they were soon proved right: Mr Arafat received an explicit guarantee from the US and Britain that, if he met his side of the bargain, he would be allowed to travel abroad. But the ink was barely dry before Mr Sharon threatened to prevent Mr Arafat's return if he went overseas. And – though the Israeli army pulled back from Ramallah – it still blockaded the town from its edge, just as Israel is doing across the West Bank.

But, above all, Palestinians complained that Mr Arafat had betrayed them by handing over six Palestinians to be held in a prison in Jericho, where their Palestinians guards will be under the constant supervision of British and American wardens.

Four of the men are fêted by the Palestinians as members of an assassination squad from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) that killed an Israeli minister widely loathed among Arabs for his racist views and whose death followed Israel's assassination of the PFLP's top man. The other two are the leader of the PFLP, Ahmed Saadat, and Fuad Shobaki, a senior Palestinian Authority official accused of bankrolling arms smuggling. All six are widely seen by Palestinians as heroes of the intifada, leading a legitimate armed struggle against occupation.

"The Palestinian people are all against this," said Loa al-Siyour, serving shwarma sandwiches in one of Ramallah's many cafés, thriving again now. "These people struggled for our freedom and then they put them in jail."

A few doors along, Mohammed – he would not give his full name – demanded to know why he should feel happy. "We are not even back to the point we were before the Israelis invaded," he said. "We are still living under closure. And now we have six of our people behind bars, being looked after by the Americans, Israel's friends."

There was unhappiness, too, over the cancellation by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, of a UN fact-finding mission to look into the Israeli atrocities in the Jenin refugee camp. UN, American and British officials insisted that the two issues – the mission and the terms of Mr Arafat's release – were unconnected.

But this has not convinced Palestinians, and nor is it likely to. Asked about this by The Independent, Mr Arafat reverted to type: "Jeningrad?" he asked. Stalingrad, one was tempted to say, was on a somewhat more terrible scale.