THE MIDDLE EAST: The Palestinian Authority president, Mr Yasser Arafat, said yesterday that he accepted "in principle" a new European Union peace plan, and the Israeli prime minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, said that, "for the first time", he saw an imminent possibility of "breakthrough" in negotiations with the Palestinians.
But these rare optimistic signals were greeted sceptically.
Israeli sources ridiculed the notion of Mr Arafat genuinely committing himself to a peace programme, recalling that while the Palestinian leader had accepted in principle President Bill Clinton's bridging proposals for a permanent peace treaty almost two years ago, he had ended up raising so many reservations that he killed the plan.
And the Palestinian labour minister, Mr Ghassan Khatib, called Mr Sharon's talk of a possible imminent breakthrough "nonsense designed to deceive international opinion".
Mr Arafat discussed the EU plan - which provides for the rapid conclusion of an Israeli-Palestinian accord on an end to violence; Palestinian elections in January; the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders; and the final resolution of outstanding issues and full-fledged Palestinian statehood by 2005 - with Mr Stig Moeller, the foreign minister of Denmark, which currently holds the EU presidency.
He told Mr Moeller, who was visiting Ramallah: "In principle, we accept the ideas you brought." A full response would follow soon, Mr Arafat added.
Echoing criticism by the US State Department and the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, Mr Moeller criticised Israel for its expulsion yesterday from the West Bank to Gaza of two Palestinians, brother and sister of the man alleged to have orchestrated a double suicide-bombing in Tel Aviv in July.
Mr Moeller also deplored the killing of 14 Palestinians by Israeli forces in the past week. Israel has acknowledged that eight of the dead were civilians and the Israeli defence minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, has ordered an army investigation.
"The suicide-bombers must be stopped, of course," the Danish minister said after talks with Mr Ben-Eliezer in Tel Aviv, "but the answer to that cannot be that you kill civilians."
The two people expelled from the West Bank yesterday, Kifah and Intisar Ajouri, were smuggled into the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army.
Dozens of reporters were waiting at the Erez crossing point, where the Palestinian Authority planned to try to block their entry. But the pair - whose expulsion was approved on Tuesday by the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled that there was evidence of their direct involvement in their brother's activities - were driven into the Gaza Strip in an Israeli tank and let out in an orchard.
In TV interviews ahead of the Jewish New Year, Mr Sharon said that cracks were "deepening among the Palestinians", who had realised that they could not overpower Israel by using force.
However, he went on to say that he saw a possible opportunity for a diplomatic breakthrough.