MR SHIMON PERES, the former Israeli prime minister who narrowly lost May's general elections to Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, announced in a TV interview here last night that he would neither seek another term as Labour Party leader nor campaign again for the premiership.
Mr Peres (73) succeeded Mr Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister last November after Mr Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to the Rabin Peres peace policies with the Paltstinians. He pledged to win the elections for your sake, Yitzhak", but was defeated by Mr Netanyahu by a margin of less than 1 per cent.
Although Mr Peres has pointed, rightly, to a series of Hamas engineered suicide bombings in Israel in February and March a the prime factor in his defeat, his reputation among many Israelis as being overly prepared to compromise with the Arab world in the quest for peace was also a major contributory factor.
After the election defeat, Mr Peres resisted strong pressure from within his party to step down in favour of a younger man. Both Mr Rabin's widow, Leah, and son, Yuval, also urged Mr Peres in vain to stand aside. Last week, though another leading Labour politician, the former chief of staff, Mr Ehud Barak, announce plans to run for the leadership in next year's internal party elections. And it was Mr Barak's popular candidacy that apparently forced Mr Peres's decision last night.
Declining to go down quietly, Mr Peres used the TV interview to castigate Mr Netanyahu's policies accusing him of ruining Israel's relations with the Arab world, its international standing and its economic wellbeing He also warned of the threat of war with Syria, sooner or later, unless the government was prepared to compromise on the Golan Heights.
The first meeting took place last night between the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat and the Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, against an inauspicious backdrop. Earlier yesterday the ministry announced plans to build 1,800 new homes in the West Bank.
Mr Mordechai, a former general who only joined the Likud Party because Labour showed little interest in recruiting him, has indicated a readiness to press ahead with the much delayed Hebron pullout. But his enthusiasm is not widely shared at the cabinet table.
Mr Arafat and Mr Mordechai ended four hours of talks with apparently little progress on an Israeli troop redeployment from the West Bank town of Hebron.