The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, yesterday made sure he kissed and embraced each and every speaker when their address was over, including representatives of the rival Islamic fundamentalist groups virulently opposed to the peace treaty he signed with Israel. It was a clear display of defiance by Mr Arafat, who was presiding over the opening session of a two-day dialogue he has promoted between all Palestinian factions, including militant groups like Hamas, on which Israel demanded Mr Arafat clamp down in the wake of the July 30th Jerusalem twin-suicide bombing.
At the conference, aimed as much at boosting Mr Arafat's flagging popularity as presenting a united front in the face of economic punishments imposed by Israel after the bombing, Mr Arafat said the Palestinian people would "make concessions to no one", and warned that the closure could lead to a new Palestinian uprising.
But his attempt to display a united Palestinian front with groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad is just one side of his ambiguous relationship with the Islamic movements. After four Hamas suicide bombings in February and March last year, Mr Arafat used the opportunity to try and demolish the movement's infrastructure, and rounded up dozens of Islamic activists.
His refusal this time to take similar action, observers say, appears to be motivated less by any special affinity for Hamas, an organisation which commands up to 25 per cent of Palestinian support and which he knows could ultimately pose a threat to his rule, and more by his need to limit the damage to his image inflicted by the failing peace process and the rampant corruption in his regime.
And, while Hamas activists praised Mr Arafat for resisting Israeli and US pressure to arrest them, yesterday's show of unity could not hide the clear differences between Mr Arafat, who has staked his political survival on a peace deal with Israel, and Islamic activists who yesterday called for an abandonment of the peace process and a renewal of armed struggle.
Expressing fears that the unity conference may be nothing more than an effort by Mr Arafat to bolster his popularity, a Hamas speaker, Mr Abdel Aziz Rantisi, said his organisation hoped "this dialogue becomes a continuous one, and not one that only serves political goals".
Peter Hirschberg is a senior writer at the Jerusalem Report