The Americans swept in like a firestorm yesterday, descending on the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh with all the brawn of the last remaining superpower.
Security was tight. In the US entourage, a Clinton double rode in the black limousine. The real US President, meanwhile, exited from a lowly jeep.
The two decades that have passed since Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula have brought a wholesale transformation to Sharm al-Sheikh - once a simple Bedouin village.
Known for its pristine sands and crystal clear coves teeming with fluorescent tropical fish, the Sharm of today is the region's equivalent to the Costa del Sol. It is especially popular with Italian package tourists.
At the Hyatt hotel the delegation bedded down in 300 rooms, including 18 for CNN and other television crews. Italian tourists were bundled out of their rooms, with their bags half-packed. The press secretary of the US embassy in Tel Aviv was also evicted at 2 a.m. yesterday morning.
At 4 p.m. there was a flurry of excitement when President Clinton, accompanied by about 20 people, took a five-minute stroll around the golf course. At 100-yard intervals between the stubby palm trees were shorter stumps: motionless security men in suits.
The Israelis arrived with their own baggage, principally the posse of spin doctors on the Prime Ministerial aircraft, who distributed lurid pictures from nearly three weeks of bloodshed and factsheets on the dangerous Hamas bombers freed from Palestinian jails last week. They also handed out videos of incendiary sermons from the imam of a Gaza mosque.
They suffered a snub in return, despite the ritual pomp of an honour guard clad in white lining the route from the airport - their backs to the road and their eyes resolutely fixed to the desert horizon.
As the Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, drove to the summit centre - the Jolie Ville hotel - the route was lined with US and Palestinian flags - but not the Israeli star of David. During the last few days of tension, the Egyptian official press has returned to the language of the 1970s, before there was a peace agreement with Israel, referring to their neighbour as the "Zionist entity". Egyptian television showed only still pictures of Mr Barak's meeting with his host, President Hosni Mubarak.