Talks between a senior Israeli minister and three top officials from the Palestinian Authority just might offer the first hope in weeks of a reduction in intifada violence. From David Horovitz, in Jerusalem
Israel's Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, met the authority's Interior Minister, Mr Abdel-Razak Yehiyeh and two other senior PA officials, late on Monday and discussed a "phased" programme for Israeli troop withdrawals from Palestinian cities and the deployment of PA security forces in their stead.
Mr Yehiyeh is now heading to the United States as part of a Palestinian Authority delegation which will meet with the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, and other Bush administration officials.
The late-night meeting came as the UN General Assembly, in a non-binding resolution, urged Israel to withdraw its forces to the positions they held before the intifada erupted in September 2000.
The UN also condemned "all attacks against civilians on both sides", called for an end to "all acts of violence, terror, provocation, incitement and destruction" and sought assistance to alleviate "the current dire humanitarian situation facing the Palestinian people".
A new report by the US Agency for International Development is the latest to highlight the deteriorating conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, showing 9 per cent of Palestinian children suffering from a temporary form of malnutrition and 13 per cent chronically under-nourished.
Israeli officials insist they would like nothing more than to withdraw their forces from the major Palestinian cities they have been occupying since mid-June, when a military reinvasion of parts of the West Bank was ordered in response to a spate of suicide bombings.
The bombings however have continued almost without interruption - Israel claimed to have thwarted two more such attacks yesterday. Hence Mr Ben-Eliezer has been pushing what he calls a "pilot project" for phased withdrawals under which the authority would retake security responsibility.
Mr Yehiyeh said yesterday that rather than a phased Israeli pull- out, he had pressed for the army to leave "all the occupied territories." When this was rejected, he asked that Ramallah, the effective capital of the West Bank, be the first city restored to Palestinian Authority control. Mr Ben-Eliezer, however, favoured ordering troops out of authority territory in Gaza and Bethlehem as a first step.
There were unconfirmed reports last night that Mr Yehiyeh was amenable to this and was seeking further Israeli clarifications. Hamas officials say they will not respect an agreement along these lines.
Any such progress notwithstanding, Israel is still hunting down the alleged orchestrators of bombings and other attacks. Near Jenin overnight, Israeli troops killed two leaders of the Al-Aksa Brigades, a militia group loyal to Mr Yasser Arafat, which has carried out numerous recent suicide bombings. One of those killed, Ali Ajouri (23), was said by Israel to have despatched the two suicide bombers who killed five people in south Tel Aviv three weeks ago.
The army has already demolished the Ajouri family home and is bent on deporting two relatives of Ajouri from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. The deportation orders are being challenged by the family in the Israel Supreme Court.
That same court ruled yesterday that the army need not give families advance warning that their homes were to be demolished, accepting the state's argument that such a warning period might be used to booby-trap the homes and thus put soldiers' lives at risk. Israeli government policy is now to demolish bombers' homes, in the hope that concern for their families might deter the bombers.
Meanwhile Israel's Interior Minister, Mr Eli Yishai, revealed plans to strip three Israeli Arabs, allegedly involved in "acts of terror", of their citizenship - an unprecedented punishment which was immediately criticised by Israeli Arab leaders and some Israeli Jewish jurists, who asserted it would never be contemplated where Jews were concerned.