Arab foreign ministers voiced their frustration with the Israeli government yesterday as they wound up a three-day meeting at the Cairo-based Arab League.
After long, often heated, sessions, the ministers blamed Israel for the crisis in the peace talks and condemned the latest incursion of Jewish settlers on to Arab land in East Jerusalem.
"Over the past few days, we have been witnessing the farce of the occupation of Palestinian houses in Ras al-Amud by settlers and the procrastination of the Israeli government in handling this issue," the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, told the ministers on Saturday, referring to an Israeli deal allowing Jewish students to replace settlers occupying a house in an Arab area of East Jerusalem.
"We need practical, political and economic . . . efforts to protect these sacred places from the dangers of Judaisation, expansion and control," he added.
But, as is often the case when the Arab League meets, there was no agreement on how to confront the crisis.
The ministers' final statement blamed Israel for the "regression" of the peace process, but it did little more than warn that this had led to "reconsideration of the steps taken towards Israel within the framework of peace", a somewhat weakened version of a threat to suspend normalisation with the Jewish state made earlier this year.
The one issue on which the Arabs could have taken concrete action to show their displeasure over the state of the peace process was an economic summit with Israel, due to be held in Qatar this November. Some countries have said the conference should be conditional on Israel renewing its peace pledges.
According to sources at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Mr Arafat fainted after an intense argument with the Qatari Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, over whether the event should be cancelled. The ministers finally decided that countries could make up their own minds about attending the summit, which is an annual event designed to integrate Israel into the region's economy.
The ministers did agree on one thing, however: the visit to the region last week by the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, was a positive development and her position supporting the land-for-peace principle was "balanced".
Reuter reports from Nablus:
The Israeli army said yesterday it had rounded up dozens of Palestinians in villages in the northern West Bank in an arrest campaign personally directed by the military commander of the West Bank, according to a censored report.
"Security forces last night [Saturday] conducted a wide-ranging operation . . . during which they arrested tens of Palestinians who are now being interrogated. The operation was conducted as part of activities to deter and prevent terror," an army spokesman said.
Witnesses said the army imposed a curfew on one village at dawn, gathered all men over the age of 16 at a local school, and disconnected all the village telephones.