THE MIDDLE EAST: Israel has deferred a planned military offensive in the Gaza Strip, following pressure from the United States, a new call from Arab leaders for peace, and media leaks about the targets of the intended operation.
But as the army yesterday sent home some of the reservists it had called-up for the offensive, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, was battling with members of his own Likud party, and especially his predecessor and would-be successor Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, against proposals designed to prevent him from negotiating on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Mr Netanyahu, who handed the leadership of the Likud to Mr Sharon three years ago, used a stormy gathering of the party's key membership to accuse Mr Sharon of having made "the gravest political mistake" in recent months by endorsing the idea of Palestinian statehood. The establishment of Palestine would inevitably spell "the end of the Jewish state", he declared.
Instead, Israel had to grant the Palestinians "limited autonomy" and to "get rid of" Mr Arafat and bring down his "corrupt, terrorist" Palestinian Authority.
In what deteriorated into open verbal warfare, Mr Sharon retorted that, unlike Mr Netanyahu, "I never shook hands with Arafat". While Mr Netanyahu wrote books, gave lectures and coined slogans, the Prime Minister said, "I am the one carrying the burden." Ceding nothing to Mr Netanyahu in his castigation of Mr Arafat, Mr Sharon demanded "an end to terrorism, violence and incitement" and widespread "reforms" in the Palestinian Authority as a precondition for substantive peace negotiations. But he pleaded with members of the party's central committee not to pass a resolution outlawing Palestinian statehood, since this would only harm Israel's international position. "It's not even on the agenda," he said.
Late last night, it was still unclear how the committee would resolve the issue, but defeat for Mr Sharon would be a personal humiliation and profound diplomatic handicap.
Indeed, the subject could have immediate implications for new moves by some Arab leaders to try to create conditions conducive to a return to the peace table. In Egypt over the weekend, President Hosni Mubarak hosted discussions with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar Assad in which they affirmed their commitment to the landmark Saudi initiative, which envisages normal ties between Israel and the Arab world after an Israeli withdrawal from all territory it captured in the 1967 war. Prince Abdullah added, in a newspaper interview, that "return of refugees is also a must" - a condition Israeli leaders of left and right have always rejected.
Privately, Prince Abdullah and US President George Bush have reached understandings to work together to advance peace efforts, with Mr Bush urging restraint on Mr Sharon, and the Saudi leader bringing bolstered Arab support for efforts to thwart Palestinian attacks on Israel.
Jordan's King Abdullah underlined this new effort with a weekend interview in which, remarkably, he spoke of the need for Mr Arafat, in the wake of last Tuesday's suicide bombing at Rishon Letzion, "to muster all his resources not only to stop terror, because terror is getting him nowhere . . . If he does not deliver the goods, then the Palestinians will miss out on the opportunity that now exists".
Although Israel's Chief of Staff, Gen Shaul Mofaz, said yesterday that "Gazans should be worried", it appears that comments such as King Abdullah's, combined with pressure from the US, proved decisive in persuading Mr Sharon to postpone a planned offensive in Gaza in retaliation for the Rishon Letzion blast. Aides to Mr Sharon also blamed media leaks, about the operation's planned focus on Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets, for the volte-face. Military intelligence chiefs were also reportedly warning of the potentially high casualty rate of any offensive, with Palestinian groups vowing to resist Israeli incursions.
And it is by no means clear how wide an Israeli public consensus exists for such an operation. At least 50,000 Israelis participated in a peace rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night - the largest such demonstration for 18 months - in what might presage the re-emergence of a strong Israeli peace camp.
In Gaza yesterday, a Jewish settler was shot dead by one of his Palestinian workers - the kind of incident that, if repeated, could well yet prompt a military response. And not all reservists called up last week have been stood down.