In a rare and emotional appearance on Israeli television last night, the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, pleaded with Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, to come back to the negotiating table, and warned of war if the current crisis was not resolved.
Mr Arafat made his dramatic appeal as the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, completed the Israeli-Palestinian section of her Middle East visit, pronounced herself deeply disappointed at the lack of progress she had made, and declared that she would not be returning to the region until its leaders took some "hard decisions".
In his interview, Mr Arafat said he was doing "100 per cent" to fight the military wing of Hamas - the Islamic extremists who have claimed responsibility for recent Jerusalem suicide bombings - but insisted the bombers themselves had come from overseas.
"Yesterday, I had arrested 123 [Hamas activists]," he said. "The military wing has been squeezed by us. But you can't ask me to liquidate all the Muslim brothers."
Mr Arafat, whose mouth trembled through most of the interview, was adamant that the Oslo peace process was not dead, but said that Mr Netanyahu's policies were creating "the best platform. . . for fanatical groups". Unless there was a dramatic change, he warned, "war and all the confusion will happen in the area". To prevent that, he urged Mr Netanyahu: "Let us return back to the negotiations, and protect the peace process." Mr Arafat's talk of war is echoed on the Israeli side. The Israeli army is reported to be preparing for the possibility of "low-intensity conflict" with Palestinians.
And Ms Albright underlined the atmosphere of pessimism by saying that, at a time that demanded big decisions, "we were only able to take small ones". The secretary's mildly worded call on Thursday for a halt to settlement expansion had produced an adamant response from Mr Netanyahu's office that this was "utterly impossible".
Similarly, her assertion to the Palestinian leadership, repeated on Palestinian radio yesterday, that "the average Palestinian has no greater enemy than Hamas and Islamic Jihad", has produced no discernable intensification of Mr Arafat's struggle with the Islamists. And so, the secretary said flatly yesterday, she was not going to "tread water" in the region. Instead, she has invited Israeli and Palestinian officials to talks later this month in Washington.
Although Ms Albright has stressed the US will remain by Israel's side "for as long as the sun shall rise", Israel's strategic importance has receded, and the US has more pressing international concerns elsewhere, including China, Russia and NATO.
Later she took her entourage to Damascus, another capital where Mr Christopher spent many hours cooling his heels. She was apparently carrying a message from Mr Netanyahu offering new terms for resuming talks.
But any optimism on that front should be set against reports here yesterday that Syria had recently deployed dozens of Scud missile launchers in the south of the country, armed with long-range Scuds capable of carrying chemical warheads.
The military wing of Hamas yesterday accused Israel of kidnapping one of the movement's senior political leaders, Dr Ibrahim Makadmeh, and warned that Israel would "pay heavily" for the crime. The Israeli Prime Minister's office, however, emphatically denied all knowledge of any such kidnapping. Palestinian sources suggested that Dr Makadmeh may have gone to ground in fear that the Palestinian Authority might be seeking to question him.
An Israeli man who went missing on Wednesday afternoon and was feared kidnapped by Hamas was found after an anonymous tip-off yesterday morning, bound and semi-conscious, with a keffiyeh on his head and a book of psalms in his hands, in a burning building in southern Israel.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report