Israeli and Palestinian leaders are agonising over their dubious Christmas present from President Bill Clinton: A framework proposal that effectively asks Israel to relinquish sovereignty to the Palestinians over the Temple Mount, and the Palestinians to abandon the notion of refugees returning to homes inside sovereign Israel, in order to achieve a permanent peace treaty.
Mr Clinton, who doesn't have much time, has asked Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak and the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, to give him their responses by today. Mr Barak is leaning towards a conditional acceptance, provided Mr Arafat says "yes" first; Mr Arafat is less than enthused, asserting that the proposal "did not remove the obstacles on the path to peace". And both men have doubts as to whether their respective peoples would be prepared to swallow a solution along the lines suggested by Mr Clinton.
Opinion polls in Israel suggest a strong majority oppose full Palestinian control over the Temple Mount - where Israel has claimed sovereignty since 1967, but where a Moslem Trust has maintained administrative authority. Israel's chief rabbis have publicly rejected the notion. Opposition leaders like Jerusalem's right-wing Mayor Ehud Olmert, are publicly castigating Mr Barak for so much as entertaining the idea. Even the Nobel Peace Laureate, Mr Shimon Peres, who last week sought to campaign against Mr Barak on a firmly pro-peace platform, is privately questioning its wisdom.
Similarly, on the Palestinian side, there is widespread opposition to an accord that does not guarantee a "right of return", at least in principle, for those Palestinians and their descendants who left homes inside sovereign Israel in 1948. Mr Marwan Barghouti, a self-proclaimed Arafat loyalist whose gunmen have been at the forefront of the past three months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank, declared yesterday that not a single Palestinian "would dare accept these American ideas".
The unveiling of the American proposal is being perceived on both sides here as almost an act of desperation, by an outgoing president who has seen seven years of peacemaking efforts washed away in a tide of bloodshed since late September. Among Israeli opposition leaders, furthermore, Mr Barak's inclination to accept the proposal is also being characterised as an act of desperation ahead of the prime ministerial elections on February 6th.
"For 2,000 years, our people prayed to this city, dreamed of going back to one place: the Temple Mount," said Mr Olmert, whose Likud party has publicly vowed to abrogate any accord Mr Barak might sign should its prime ministerial candidate, Gen Ariel Sharon, prevail on February 6th.
Agencies add: The Palestinian side expressed strong reservations about the Clinton plan last night.
A senior Palestinian official said the Palestinian leadership would send him a noncommittal letter instead.
"The Palestinian letter will not include a response in the positive or negative. It includes several reservations about the American ideas," the official, who asked not be identified, said after President Arafat met advisers.
The PLO executive committee will meet in urgent session, an adviser to Mr Arafat said.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shlomo Ben Ami, said that a deal will require international guarantees, including "the deployment of an international force." Gen Sharon said he was ready to make "difficult concessions" for peace if elected prime minister.