MAKING a high-profile visit to one of the largest Jewish settlements in the West Bank yesterday, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, turned to one of the senior army officers accompanying him for an assessment of the overall atmosphere between Palestinians and Israelis on the ground.
"It's like the calm before the storm," the officer replied, intimating that stalemated peace negotiations were likely, sooner rather than later, to give way to renewed confrontation.
Mr Netanyahu, apparently unwilling to accept this assessment, attempted a correction. "After the storm," he suggested, referring, presumably, to the last outbreak of violence two months ago that left more than 60 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers dead.
"After," the officer conceded. But he stood his ground. "Perhaps before as well."
Mr Netanyahu may be reluctant to acknowledge it, but his government's inability to agree terms with the Palestinians over the stalled Hebron troop withdrawal, combined with his ongoing support of settlement expansion, has brought the Middle East to the brink of further conflict.
Two months after promising rapid progress at the emergency Washington summit that followed the late September gun-battles, peace talks have deteriorated into recriminations and threats. The Palestinians have submitted a list of 34 alleged Israeli violations of signed peace accords, and warned of violence if settlement expansion continues.
Mr Netanyahu yesterday visited the barren hillsides on the outskirts of the Ariel settlement to underline that expansion was government policy.
"Why shouldn't settlements thrive?" he asked, gesturing across the rocky surroundings. "If we hadn't come here, it would have stayed barren for another 2,000 years.
On a visit to Oslo, where the peace process began in secretive Israeli-PLO contacts some four years ago, Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, asserted that only minor issues were now holding up a Hebron deal and that these could be resolved at a summit between Mr Netanyahu and the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat. And Mr Arafat last night postponed a planned trip to the Gulf.
But both Israeli and Palestinian sources played down speculation about a meeting, and said Mr Levy was being overly optimistic. Far from a deal on Hebron taking shape, sources in both camps said growing mutual mistrust means that a final accord seems further off now than it did a month ago.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report
AFP adds: A Jerusalem court yesterday ordered the conditional release of two Israeli border policemen charged with aggravated assault and abuse of power after they were filmed beating and abusing six Palestinian workers.
The court ruled that the defendants, Mr David Ben-Abu (20), and Mr Tzahi Shmaya (19), should be released today on $2,800 bail and placed under house arrest until their trial. No date for the trial has been set.