Almost a week after two bombers killed themselves and 13 Israel is in Jerusalem's main vegetable market, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are talking to each other again, and diplomatic efforts to renew substantive co-operation are gathering pace.
Mr Yasser Arafat's deputy, Mr Abu Mazen, last night telephoned the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy. He told him that Mr Arafat had instructed his security forces to renew their partnership in the field, to help prevent further attacks on Israeli targets.
Mr Levy, in turn, assured the Palestinian leader that his government wanted to restore peace efforts and had no desire to engineer the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian officials have claimed in recent days that the punitive economic measures introduced against the Palestinians in the wake of the blast, including the continuing blockade of Palestinian cities, were ultimately designed to end Mr Arafat's rule.
If Mr Mazen's conciliatory tone last night was designed in part to pave the way for the lifting of these measures, Mr Levy's publicised recommitment to a peace partnership with the PA could well reflect growing Israeli embarrassment that, having so publicly blamed Mr Arafat for failing to prevent last week's blast, no evidence whatsoever has yet been produced to show that the bombers came from Arafat-controlled areas.
Indeed, speculation that the bombers came from abroad is being heightened by the suggestion that the explosive used in the two bombs is different from that used in previous bombings carried out by local Hamas or Islamic Jihad cells.
That a would-be bomber can penetrate Israel from overseas was underlined dramatically in April 1996, when a Lebanese man, who had flown into Ben-Gurion Airport from Switzerland on a forged British passport, blew himself up in an East Jerusalem hotel room while assembling a bomb from components he had smuggled in with him.
While Israel remains on the alert for further blasts, the Palestinian areas are rife with anger over the closure orders, which are playing havoc with daily life. Tensions have not been eased by the murder on Sunday night of a West Bank shepherd.
In efforts to prevent further escalation of that tension, Mr Arafat was visiting Jordan, Mr Levy flies to Cairo today, while the US special envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, is due here later in the week.
King Hussein of Jordan will travel to Jerusalem tomorrow for talks with the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli radio reported early today.
In the latest skirmish of the increasingly dirty Israeli-Hizbullah war in south Lebanon, an Israeli commando unit killed six Hizbullah members, including two commanders, overnight.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report