Senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials convened a joint meeting last night after yet another round of spiralling violence. Their meeting, however, was overshadowed by the growing momentum of a Saudi Arabian peace initiative that has refocused attention on Middle East diplomacy for the first time in over a year.
The security meeting took place in Tel Aviv, after Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, gave the go-ahead. The Palestinians cancelled the last meeting, scheduled for Sunday, and said they were suspending all security and political contacts with Israel after leading ministers voted not to lift the travel ban on Mr Arafat, who has been confined to Ramallah since mid-December.
After a series of shootings on Monday in which three Israelis and two Palestinians were killed, the violence tapered off yesterday. Palestinian sources reported that three residents of the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, including a 15-month-old infant, were injured by Israeli tank fire. In the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa, police apprehended a Palestinian who they said was planning to carry out an attack there. They said they found a Kalashnikov assault rifle and bullet clips in a bag he was carrying, and identified the man as a resident of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
It was the Saudi peace initiative, however, which dominated the agenda, with the US, the Russians and the EU all welcoming the plan, described yesterday by UN special envoy Mr Terje Roed-Larsen as "one of the few rays of hope we have seen in the Middle East peace process in a long time". The initiative, first aired by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in an interview in The New York Times, proposes a simple peace equation - maybe too simple - whereby the Arab states would offer Israel full and normal relations, in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from all territories conquered in 1967, including the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Most significantly, US President, Mr George Bush, telephoned the Crown Prince yesterday, and a White House spokesman later referred to the plan as "helpful". The High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU, Mr Javier Solana, who was in Israel yesterday, announced he would hold unscheduled talks with the Crown Prince in Jeddah today to discuss the proposed formula.
Mr Solana said he had got a "very positive" response from the Palestinians, and that Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, had told him he was "ready to meet anybody from Saudi Arabia, formally, informally, publicly, discreetly, whatever, to get better information about this initiative".
Saudi officials, however, made it clear that there would be no meetings with the Israelis until a deal was sealed.