ISRAEL: Mr Sharon can be expected to stick to his domestically popular "no-talks-under-fire" policy if he gets re-elected, writes Peter Hirschberg, in Jerusalem.
The day after Mr Ariel Sharon won election as prime minister in February 2001, articles appeared in the local press suggesting he might be a De Gaulle-type figure, ready to cast off his hawkish ideological baggage, dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - many of them built by him - and reach a settlement with the Palestinians.
It's almost two years later, and that has not happened. Now, with elections in Israel only a month away on January 28th, and with the polls forecasting re-election for Mr Sharon, some pundits are again predicting that the prime minister might be ready to strike a deal with the Palestinians in his second term. They point to his repeated pronouncements that he is willing to accept an independent Palestinian state, and to his age. In his mid-70s, if re-elected Mr Sharon's second term is likely to be his last, they say, and he wants to go down in history as the leader who ended the 100-year conflict.
But as was the case two years ago, these pundits are probably again looking into the wrong crystal ball. In 2003, Mr Sharon can be expected to stick to his domestically popular "no-talks-under-fire" policy, and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, while he has less control on the ground than he did when the intifada erupted two years ago, is still likely to oblige him by making no attempt to scale back the uprising.
The bottom line: A major diplomatic breakthrough in the course of the year is unlikely, while the bloodletting of the last two years can be expected to continue at various levels of intensity. Suicide bomb attacks in Israel are unlikely to disappear, and Israeli soldiers and tanks will continue their regular forays into West Bank cities and towns.
With each major Palestinian attack, the issue of deporting Mr Arafat will again be raised in the government. If re-elected, Mr Sharon's decision on this matter, as well as on other diplomatic issues, will depend partly on the Americans - they have so far asked him to refrain from moving against the Palestinian leader - and on the type of coalition he cobbles together. If Labor rejoins him in a national unity government, then the centre-left party is likely to act as something of a moderating force.
Even if the violence does subside and Mr Sharon is forced to talk to the Palestinians, he is unlikely to find anyone willing to sit opposite him at the negotiating table, based on the terms he is offering. While he has expressed readiness to accept a Palestinian state at the end of a long, tedious negotiating process, punctuated by several interim phases, his vision is of a highly limited entity, in some 50 per cent of the West Bank, and with Israel maintaining control of the border crossings and airspace of a future state. And even if he is willing to evacuate some settlements, it is safe to predict that his blueprint sees many remaining in place.
For the Palestinians, who rejected former Labor prime minister Mr Ehud Barak's offer of the Gaza Strip and over 90 per cent of the West Bank for a future state, this is a non-starter. Even if the sides can be bullied back to the table by the international community, Mr Sharon has made it clear he is not willing to meet Mr Arafat there. He has made the sidelining of the Palestinian leader a precondition for renewing talks, and he has successfully marketed this view in the White House.
The Americans have also made revamping of the Palestinian Authority's political and security structures a condition for progress on the diplomatic front. But as long as Mr Arafat is at the helm, don't expect 2003 to be the year of Palestinian reform.
If there are changes, they will be cosmetic. The Palestinian leader has done little to foster civic institutions since arriving in the territories in 1994. In fact, he has regularly ignored Supreme Court decisions, has temporarily shut newspapers critical of the Palestinian Authority, and his security forces - now largely obliterated by the Israeli army - have often been guilty of basic rights violations. There might, however, be growing internal pressure on Mr Arafat to carry out reforms. Palestinians have been critical of his cabinet, accusing ministers of corruption. There was even some initial questioning of Mr Arafat's handling of the intifada and the Camp David talks in 2002. But these voices were silenced when Mr Sharon ordered the bulldozers into the Palestinian leader's Ramallah compound in September and the street rallied around Mr Arafat. This criticism could re-emerge in 2003, but Mr Arafat will stubbornly resist any attempt aimed at forcing him to devolve power.
The joker in the pack is a possible US strike against Iraq. The last Gulf War, in 1991, spurred a vigorous peace initiative led by George Bush Snr. So far, though, Bush junior has shown little propensity for following in his father's footsteps, and there is no guarantee that, with the peace process in tatters, his appetite for unlocking the Middle East conflict will have been enhanced after an assault on Iraq.
Without energetic international intervention, however, the two sides appear hopelessly incapable of extricating themselves from the current warfare. The Europeans will try to pressure the Americans to become more involved in the region in the course of the year. British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has already suggested to Mr Bush that he cannot gun for Iraq and ignore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But Mr Bush, who shares Mr Sharon's dim view of Mr Arafat, will have to be convinced that it is in his interest, especially in a pre-election year, to wade into the Middle East morass and insist that the sides relate seriously to his peace "road map". Israeli military intelligence has predicted that in the wake of a US assault on Iraq, Mr Arafat might be shunted aside. Should that happen, or should Labor leader Mr Amram Mitzna pull off an electoral miracle and become prime minister - his only hope at present is that a corruption scandal in the centre-right Likud erodes the party before the election - then 2003 could be a defining year in the conflict. Mr Mitzna has promised to re-engage the Palestinians around the negotiating table, including Mr Arafat, even if the violence continues. He has also pledged to pull Israeli forces out of Gaza and evacuate settlements there within a year of taking office. But for now, this is in the realm of fantasy.