Israel and the Palestinians are finally gearing up for the start of the most crucial stage of their peace process: talks aimed at producing a permanent peace treaty within a year.
Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, has named a career diplomat who is serving as ambassador to Jordan, Mr Oded Eran, to head his negotiating team. The Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, has already appointed Mr Yasser Abed-Rabbo, the Palestinian Authority's Information Minister, to lead his delegation.
Neither side much likes the other's choice: Israel complains that Mr Abed-Rabbo is an extremist who will be unwilling to compromise in the talks. Mr Abed-Rabbo considers Mr Eran too minor a player to be taken seriously, and says the appointment proves that Mr Barak plans to do most of the real negotiating himself, in face-to-face meetings with Mr Arafat.
To be honest, neither side much likes its own choice either: Mr Abed-Rabbo is mistrusted by some Palestinians because he was never a member of Mr Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction of the PLO. Mr Eran, meanwhile, was not Mr Barak's first, second or even third choice for the job.
The Prime Minister wanted Mr Gilad Sher, a successful lawyer who led the talks that produced September's Sharm peace deal, to stay on to head the talks on a permanent treaty, but Mr Sher was unwilling to give up his private practice, become a government employee and take a substantial pay cut.
The talks were formally announced six weeks ago, but nothing could move until the negotiating teams were named. Next Monday, in Oslo, the hard bargaining will begin in earnest, at a summit, marking the fourth anniversary of the assassination of the Israeli prime minister Mr Yitzhak Rabin, at which President Clinton, Mr Arafat, Mr Barak and their teams will be present.
It is understood that Mr Barak has drawn up a "framework agreement" to present to Mr Arafat setting out the key issues to be resolved and the Israeli positions. Since those issues include resolving the permanent status of Jerusalem and of the settlements; deciding on how many Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars can return to Israel and/or the Palestinian areas; setting out the modalities for Palestinian independence; allocating water resources and so on, it is unlikely, to say the least, that a final peace treaty will be ready for signature, as scheduled in existing accords, by September 2000.
Still, the fact that the two sides are now ready to enter the final chapter of this process underlines how successful Mr Barak has been in reviving relations with the Palestinians, after the three years of the Netanyahu administration during which confidence in the partnership ebbed away.
Since taking office following May's election victory, Mr Barak has transferred further West Bank areas to Mr Arafat's control, resumed the release of Palestinian security prisoners, and this week opened the safe-passage route enabling Palestinians to travel relatively freely between Gaza and the West Bank.
At the same time, he has infuriated the Palestinians by overseeing a further expansion of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and his assurance that at least 12 of 42 recently established settlement outposts would be removed has so far proved empty.
Mr Barak and the established settler leaders have run into opposition from the younger generation who set up the new outposts. Yesterday they ran into opposition, too, from a group of right-wing rabbis who reissued a ruling that outlaws the evacuation of any West Bank land. "It is absolutely forbidden to turn over parts of the [Biblical] Land of Israel to gentiles," said Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky, leader of the rabbis' group.
Mr Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, cited such rabbinical rulings to justify his killing, and Mr Barak's colleagues yesterday warned that the rabbis' ruling could again be used by extremists to justify violence. Rabbi Gerlitzky retorted that the ruling was being issued "to save Jewish lives, not to provoke violence".
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, and his US counterpart, Mrs Madeleine Albright, will hold talks in Washington tomorrow in preparation for next Monday's Middle East summit in Oslo, according to a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.