Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, said yesterday that he was going to Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington with the feeling the negotiations could get the peace process moving again.
But in the run-up to the USsponsored talks starting on Monday, the military wing of Hamas said it was planning a "big operation" against Israel. The Izz elDin al-Qassam brigades said in a statement obtained by Reuters that Israel had "one last chance" to avoid an attack by releasing Hamas prisoners.
Mr Levy struggled to assure Palestinians that he would be speaking at the Washington talks on behalf of the entire Israeli government, despite his much publicised trials of strength with the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The cabinet held a thorough and lengthy discussion and I am leaving for these talks in Washington with the feeling there is a possibility to advance the process and reach understandings," Mr Levy told Israel Radio.
The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, has said the talks between Mr Levy and a senior PLO official, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, will be "a waste of time", questioning whether the foreign minister had a mandate to make deals.
In comments likely to add to Mr Arafat's doubts, the Israeli Internal Security Minister, Mr Avigdor Kahalani, said that Mr Levy had no cabinet mandate to set the scope of a long-delayed West Bank troop redeployment which the PLO demands Israel implement.
Israel's Maariv newspaper meanwhile said senior Israeli and Syrian military officers had been conducting secret talks in Washington in an attempt to renew formal peace negotiations broken off 18 months ago.
In south Lebanon yesterday, Hizbullah guerrillas killed two members of Israel's client Lebanese militia with a roadside bomb. In reprisal, an Israeli warplane fired a rocket at a suspected Hizbullah target in an area between the southern port-city of Sidon and the Iqlim al-Toufah hills.