A reluctant Israeli government last night finally gave its grudging approval to the Wye Summit peace deal with the Palestinians, and simultaneously imposed several new conditions on further peace progress.
The deal, signed at the White House on October 23rd, was eventually voted through on an 8:4 vote in the Israeli cabinet, with five ministers abstaining. A Knesset vote on the deal early next week is likely to show a far greater majority in favour.
The cabinet's deliberations - which began last week but were suspended after Friday's Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in Jerusalem's main vegetable market - were partially overshadowed yesterday by growing concern here at the possibility of anti-Israeli fallout from an imminent US-led attack on Iraq.
US citizens here have been advised that they might want to consider flying out, and told that there is some fear, albeit marginal, that Iraq - which launched three dozen Scud missiles at Israel in the Gulf War seven years ago - might attempt to use chemical or biological weapons. Worried Israelis have again started to flock to gas-mask distribution centres.
There have been claims here that the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, finally pushed the Wye deal through his cabinet because of pressure from President Clinton, who told him that the US was being hampered in its efforts to win Arab support for a firm stance against Iraq because of grievance at the perceived "double standard" - whereby Israel is allowed to drag its feet on critical issues, but Iraq is not.
Whether or not that is the case, it was a far-from-happy Mr Netanyahu who announced the cabinet's decision at a press conference last night. "It is not easy to relinquish so much as a square centimetre of the homeland," he said of the Wye deal, under which Israel is to withdraw from 13 per cent more of the West Bank within the next three months.
While approving the withdrawal, ministers also voted through four new constraints: they demanded that a final withdrawal mandated under the Oslo accords not exceed 1 per cent more of the West Bank; they insisted that they reconvene at each phase of the Wye deal in the coming weeks to ensure that the Palestinians are fulfilling their commitments on battling Islamic extremism; they demanded that the Palestine National Council hold a formal vote when it meets next month to publicly amend anti-Israeli clauses of the PLO Covenant; and they made clear that, if the Palestinians choose to declare independent statehood unilaterally next May 4th, when the negotiating period mandated under the Oslo accords expires, Israel may extend its sovereignty into the West Bank, annexing Jewish settlements and other areas of "national interest".
There are also reports that, to appease settlers and other hard-liners, the government is to award contracts for housing construction in the next few days at Har Homah, the disputed site on the southern edge of Jerusalem. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Gen Ariel Sharon, said last night that "development" would be maintained at settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Far from being mollified by such attempts to placate them, however, thousands of settlers and their supporters demonstrated last night in Tel Aviv, vowing to try to bring down Mr Netanyahu and elect a new prime minister more sympathetic to their cause.
The US embassy has warned American citizens in Egypt to take extra care in case of attacks timed to coincide with the anniversary of last year's massacre in Luxor.
Six militants of the Gama'a al Islamiya killed 58 foreign holidaymakers and four Egyptians on November 17th.