The Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, last night told the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, that he will attend a May 4th peace summit in London.
However, Palestinian officials say they fear nothing of substance will emerge from the event and that Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, will use it to score public relations points at their expense.
At a news conference in Gaza, Mr Blair made clear that it was the United States, not Britain or the European Union, that would be issuing the official invitations to the London talks - an arrangement that underlines how marginal the European part in Mideast peacemaking still remains.
All that Britain would be doing, Mr Blair repeated yesterday, was hosting the talks and providing encouragement to the main players. The EU role, he stressed, "should be complementary to the United States".
Arrangements for the summit are still being made: it is not clear whether Jordan, Egypt or other Arab states will attend, or even whether Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat will actually meet face-to-face rather than in separate sessions with the US mediators.
Indeed, it appears that Mr Netanyahu jumped the gun a little on Sunday night in publicising the planned meeting. By announcing, with Mr Blair by his side, that he was ready to go anywhere, any time, including London next month, to advance peace efforts, he scored an early PR success. The Palestinian concern is that the Israeli Prime Minister is endorsing the summit solely for publicity.
Speaking to pupils at a Palestinian school in Gaza City, Mr Blair referred to the recent breakthrough on Northern Ireland, and said he hoped Middle East leaders could show similar goodwill and determination to make headway.
But the key difference between the Irish and Israeli-Palestinian tracks is that the latter is already clearly mapped out. No new deals are required. What is lacking is the willingness to implement signed accords, in particular the agreements governing Israeli land hand-overs to the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Mr Arafat - who took the unusual step of travelling to the Israeli border to usher Mr Blair into Union Jack-bedecked Gaza, and ensured a formal welcoming ceremony complete with drums and bagpipes - had no choice but to promise to attend the London talks, for fear of being blamed for scuppering peace hopes.
However, his chief negotiator, Mr Saeb Erekat, gave vent earlier in the day to the Palestinian anger at being outmanoeuvred, suggesting that the summit would merely mark another opportunity for "Netanyahu's stalling tactics".
Later, Mr Blair and his wife, Cherie, visited the Shati refugee camp in Gaza and he said the living conditions there were "unacceptable".
In the name of humanity, he said, the peace process "had to come to fruition".
Reuters adds The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, will meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders separately in London on May 4th in a new quest for a breakthrough in mideast peace efforts, the US State Department said yesterday.