The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, is due in the Middle East next week, on a visit that coincides with Britain's presidency of the EU. Mr Cook's tour will be followed shortly afterwards by a visit from the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan.
Whether the sharp debating skills of Mr Cook, or the silkier approach favoured by Mr Annan, will be able to shift the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts may depend to some extent on a 13-year-old, Samir Karameh.
Samir, who lives in Hebron, was hit in the forehead on Wednesday by Israeli army gunfire. He was hit by one of the thousands of rubber bullets that have been fired by Israeli troops in four days of clashes. These erupted in the West Bank on Tuesday after three Palestinians were killed by soldiers at an Israeli roadblock outside Hebron. These bullets are actually steel balls with a rubber coating, and Samir's case underlines that they can be as lethal as live ammunition.
Reported to have been an innocent bystander, Samir was admitted to the city's Ahli Hospital in a critical condition and is now said to be clinically dead. His doctor says there is no hope.
Unprecedented co-operation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian policemen - remarkable, given the peace talks deadlock - has kept the lid on the disturbances this week.
In Nablus yesterday, for example, it was Palestinian policemen, not Israeli soldiers, who fired tear gas at Palestinian protesters advancing on an (evacuated) Jewish study centre on the city's outskirts, and who used clubs to beat back the front row of demonstrators.
Israeli troops wounded 13 Palestinians, nine of them journalists, in clashes in the West Bank yesterday, witnesses and officials said. Violence in Hebron flared hours after a bomb went off near Jerusalem's Old City. Witnesses said the troops shot at journalists from a distance of 20 metres, even though they shouted they were members of the media.