United States officials say that Ms Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, who is due here on a peace-saving mission on Wednesday, is intent on holding Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, to the terms of the Oslo peace accords.
In interviews since last Thursday's triple suicide bombing in downtown Jerusalem, Mr Netanyahu has indicated there will be no more of the phased Israeli military withdrawals from West Bank territory that underpin the Oslo framework. In an Israel Television interview on Friday night, he said the process by which Israel "time after time hands land to the Palestinian Authority, and then murderers use these territories as their launching ground, shall not continue".
But Ms Albright, according to US officials quoted here, is determined to keep the Oslo process alive and to press Mr Netanyahu to honour the schedule of military pullbacks - the latest of which, according to the Palestinians, should be taking place right now.
Both she and Mr Netanyahu are urging Mr Yasser Arafat to launch an unprecedented assault on the Gaza and West Bank "infrastructure" of Hamas, the radical Islamic group that has taken responsibility for Thursday's and numerous previous suicide bombings. But while Mr Netanyahu has said such a crackdown could lead to resumed talks on a final peace deal, bypassing the Oslo process, Ms Albright is backing Palestinian and other Arab demands that the Oslo framework remain the basis for future peace efforts.
Palestinian leaders at the weekend accused Mr Netanyahu of seizing on the Thursday suicide blasts as a pretext to kill the Oslo accords. What's more, Palestinian officials continue to insist last week's bombers, and the pair who carried out the bombing of Jerusalem's vegetable market in July, came from overseas. A statement issued by Mr Arafat's cabinet blamed the bombings on "outside circles who received help and assistance from Israeli extremists."
But Mr Netanyahu is adamant that wherever the bombers came from, they could not have acted without assistance from Hamas activists operating "with impunity" inside Arafat-controlled areas. The Israeli prime minister has a powerful domestic reason for seeking to bury the Oslo process: while his Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, is making something of a lone defence of the Oslo track, many members of his coalition have vowed to bring him down if he transfers any further West Bank territory to Mr Arafat's control.
Given that internal political pressure, and Mr Arafat's current disinclination to enter into fullfledged conflict with the increasingly popular Hamas movement, it is not surprising that US officials are playing down expectations of the Albright visit. And yet, if any peace hopes are to be salvaged, the Secretary will surely have to take a highly active role, dragging the two reluctant leaders back into an accelerated dialogue.
Jordan yesterday arrested the Hamas spokesman in Amman, Mr Ibrahim Ghosheh, who gave television interviews warning of further Hamas attacks on Israeli targets after Thursday's bombing.
Two days after 12 Israeli commandos were killed in Lebanon, another Israeli soldier died there yesterday, in a Hizbullah attack on a military position near the southern town of Dabshe.
Mr Netanyahu said Israel was prepared to pull out of Lebanon "right away" if an arrangement could be reached to prevent Hizbullah from "coming up the border fence" and staging cross-border attacks.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report AFP adds:
Israel protested to the Palestinian Authority yesterday over the publication in Palestinian newspapers of photographs showing Lebanese guerrillas proudly displaying body parts of Israeli soldiers killed in a failed raid.
The gruesome pictures of Hezbullah guerrillas showing off an Israeli soldier's head and other body parts were printed in Al-Hayat al-Jadida, a newspaper considered the mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority, and a second daily, Al-Ayyam.