ONE OF the first things Yitzhak Rabin did, when ousting a hardline Israeli government in elections four years ago, was declare a freeze in Jewish settlement building. One of the first things Israeli hardliners have done, since voting Mr Benjamin Netanyahu into power last week, is make clear their intention to resume settlement activity on a grand scale.
Mr Netanyahu is still in the midst of coalition negotiations, and is not likely to be sworn into office for another week at the earliest, but the settlement advocates are already taking advantage of the shift in power.
Within hours of Mr Netanyahu's victory being declared, a Jewish family had quietly moved into a building in Silwan, just outside the Old City walls in overwhelmingly Arab East Jerusalem, joining the 11 families that have lived there since arriving amid massive international controversy in the days of the last Likud government.
In Hebron, meanwhile, where most Israeli troops are supposed to withdraw in the coming weeks, settlers on Wednesday celebrated Mr Netanyihus victory as a "divine reprieve" A small new building project has begun, and settler leaders talk of massively expanding the current 450 strong Jewish presence there, to turn the city into a West Bank Jewish "capital".
Mr Netanyahu chose not to join the victory celebrations in person, but did send a message applauding the Hebron Jews brave and pioneering work.
During his campaign, Mr Netanyahu pledged to expand existing settlements, hedged on the question of adding new ones, and insisted on underlining Jewish claims to control of all of Jerusalem. One of the city's deputy mayors, taking him at his word, has now unveiled plans to build 50,000 Jewish homes in the eastern part of the city claimed by the Palestinians as their capital, while demolishing 2,000 "illegally built" Arab homes.
The issue of settlement was one of the most awkward bones of contention in Israeli American ties in the years of the last Likud government, with the Bush administration insisting flatly that it considered all settlements to be "obstacles to peace". That line remains official US policy under President Clinton, and if Mr Netanyahu does begin funding settlement again, he might find that his scheduled visit to Washington later this month marks the end rather than the start of a beautiful friendship.
If little else so far, Mr Netanyahu's victory last week does seem to have brought Arab rulers closer to together. After a convivial summit in Jordan yesterday involving King Hussein, Yasser Arafat and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Mr Mubarak is today participating in a similar get together, with Syria's President Assad and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. The current Arab thinking seems to be along the lines of Mr Netanyahu's victory perhaps not being the disaster they had originally foreseen. But the truth is that nobody, quite possibly not even Mr Netanyahu himself knows quite how he is going to manage, once in power, to make good on the frequently contradictory assurances he is distributing so liberally now.
AFP adds. The UN technical commission assessing damage from Israel's 17 day "Operation Grapes of Wrath" against Hizbullah guerrillas in south Lebanon has finished its groundwork.
Mr Hazem Beblawi, the head of the commission, said his group would limit itself to descriptions without providing monetary estimates of the damage caused by the Israeli bombing in April. But he said added the commission could not assess such effects as "the loss of revenue and reduced confidence by foreign investors".