Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs are set to hold their most significant meeting for several weeks in Ramallah today. The CIA director, Mr George Tenet, will play mediator as efforts continue to turn the current fragile ceasefire into something more stable.
Mr Tenet met yesterday both the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat. Predictably, he heard complaints from both about the other's failure to fully respect a quasi-truce called unilaterally by Mr Sharon more than two weeks ago, and endorsed by Mr Arafat after Friday's Tel Aviv suicide bombing.
While Mr Sharon and other Israeli officials are giving slightly more upbeat assessments of the ceasefire's medium-term prospects, they complain that Mr Arafat is failing to rearrest the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who orchestrate suicide bombings and who were released from Palestinian jails last autumn.
Mr Arafat claims Israel expects him to enforce a ceasefire in West Bank areas where Israel rather than the Palestinian Authority has overall security responsibility. He is pushing for Israel to announce a freeze in building at Jewish settlements.
Publicly, the efforts by Israeli leaders to delegitimise Mr Arafat are continuing. The Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, has claimed the Palestinian leader has "finished his historical role" and that Israel would have to wait in its bid to make peace for a new generation of more "pragmatic" leaders. However, he said that did not mean Israel intended to topple Mr Arafat.
Earlier this week Mr Sharon had denounced Mr Arafat as a murderer and pathological liar.
In an article published by the official Palestinian Press Agency yesterday, by way of a retort, Mr Sharon was described as being in urgent need of psychiatric help, delusional and unfit to lead.
On the ground, Israeli troops clashed with Palestinians at Rafah, on the Egyptian border at the south of the Gaza Strip. The army is digging a trench there to prevent what Israel says is Palestinian arms-smuggling through tunnels. There were also clashes too, in Hebron, where soldiers chased Palestinians through the city, and in the Ramallah area.
Meanwhile, an Arab-Israeli, Mr Yusuf Samir, an Egyptianborn poet and journalist, reappeared at an army roadblock outside Bethlehem, having gone missing in the same area almost two months ago. Mr Samir claimed to have been kidnapped by Palestinian security officials and to have eventually managed to escape. However, parts of his story seemed inconsistent.