President Bush telephoned Prime Minister Sharon. An American envoy held talks in Cairo with Egyptian leaders. The UN Security Council met behind closed doors. And the US and Russia pledged to coordinate their efforts. But for all this well reported public diplomacy, there was still no sign yesterday of a substantive international effort to calm the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and every indication of its potential for escalating further.
Israel's military planners now believe that the confrontation - which has so far claimed more than 700 lives, three-quarters of them Palestinian - could last for years, and certainly through 2006, which is as far as their current forecasting work extends. The best that can be hoped for, they indicate, is a mild lull in the fighting, but that is deemed unlikely; the worst: escalation into a full-scale regional war which, they posit in a document that was leaked to the media yesterday, could be triggered by the cycle of response and counter-response that could follow a major incident on either the Palestinian or Lebanese fronts.
Asked to respond to this grim scenario yesterday, the Israeli Defence Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, retorted "nonsense". But then, having paused for further consideration, he acknowledged that he didn't see a way out of the daily violence "in the foreseeable future" and that the army had to plan for a prolonged conflict.
Indeed, even though there had been something of a tailing off in clashes on Wednesday and early yesterday - after the Israeli army cancelled a planned invasion of Palestinian-held land in the Bethlehem and Beit Jala areas because the Palestinian Authority President, Yasser Arafat, had reined in Palestinian gunmen there - the death toll rose again yesterday afternoon. A 53-year-old Palestinian taxi driver, Kamal Muallam, was killed and four of his passengers were injured when his car overturned near Nablus in the West Bank. Eyewitness reports indicated that Mr Musallam lost control of the vehicle after being hit on the head by a stone thrown though his windshield from a passing car bearing Israeli registration plates. There were also reports that four people had been killed in fighting between rival Palestinian factions in Nablus last night.
Formally, both Israel and the Palestinians remain committed to an American-brokered cease-fire document and an American-championed formula for resuming peace talks, the Mitchell proposals. Mr Sharon assured Mr Bush of that commitment yesterday, but he also told the American president that Israel "has to defend its citizens" and would therefore continue to take "preventative measures" - a reference, presumably, to the assassination of alleged Intifada kingpins, and the sending of troops into PA-held areas, both actions that have attracted US criticism.
Mr Arafat, too, is still asserting his commitment to the Mitchell proposals - despite declining to arrest the Islamic militants whom Israel has named as the orchestrators of a series of suicide bombings. Israeli troops were on high alert in the north of the country and outside the PA-held towns of Ramallah, Kalklilya and Bethlehem last night, amid intelligence warnings of further such bombings, with Ramallah subject to a full-scale army blockade.
At Mr Arafat's request, the UN Security Council is today set to hold an open meeting on the Middle East, but the United States has indicated that it would veto any attempt at operative resolutions - and specifically the dispatch to the region of international observers, which Israel opposes. On Monday, meanwhile, Arab League foreign ministers are to meet, again at Mr Arafat's request, but this too is likely to be of strictly rhetorical impact; the PA head's request for a full Arab summit has fallen on deaf ears.
Mr. Bush has been urging the respective leaders to "make up their minds that peace is preferable to war". Both Mr Sharon and Mr Arafat insist that they have long since made up their minds to this effect. It is, of course, the other side that is perpetuating the bloodshed.