One morning about a month ago, a short distance from the Erez border crossing that leads out of the Gaza Strip and into Israel, members of the Palestinian security forces arrested two 23-year-old Gazans, Mr Walid al-Hind and Mr Abed al-Rahim Arir. Both were wearing belts packed with explosives, and carrying more explosives in their holdalls.
Under interrogation they are said to have acknowledged that they were on their way to become Hamas "martyrs", to kill themselves and as many Israelis as they could take with them.
At about the same time as they were being intercepted, agents of Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence service picked up Mr Ibrahim al-Ukbi, an Israeli Arab citizen who had been recruited by Hamas, paid a large sum of money and given a car to bring Mr al-Hind and Mr al-Rahim Arir from Erez to the crowded spot, somewhere in central Israel, that had been selected by Hamas for the bombing.
It is a safe bet that, had the attack succeeded, President Clinton would have known not to bother inviting Palestine's President, Mr Yasser Arafat, and Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, to this weekend's Middle East peace summit in Maryland.
While most media reports in recent months have depicted the deadlock in Middle East peacemaking as revolving principally around land, and specifically around the 13 per cent West Bank withdrawal demanded of Israel, the negotiators in Maryland actually have next to nothing to resolve on that issue.
Mr Netanyahu has indicated he will approve a further pullout from 10 per cent of the West Bank, with another 3 per cent to be designated as a "nature reserve", effectively off limits to both Israel and the Palestinians.
Thus the Israeli Prime Minister will be able to tell his hardline critics that he held firm, and limited the withdrawal to 10 per cent, while Mr Arafat will be able to assure his people that the Israelis are gone from 13 per cent, bringing the proportion of the West Bank now under Palestinian control to almost 40 per cent.
The real hard work at the summit will centre not on land but on security, on that battle against the extremists. Mr Arafat and his delegation will have made an effort to turn this into a reciprocal issue, demanding that Israel disarm Jewish settler radicals. But Mr Netanyahu will have shrugged that off, issuing an assurance that the Shin Bet is closely monitoring Jewish extremists.
And so the focus will remain on the Palestinian side. Israel wants Mr Arafat to wage an all-out war against Hamas, complete with mass arrests and confiscation of weaponry. Mr Arafat is understandably wary, rightly anticipating that his regime might not survive such an all-out confrontation.
In the "joint security memorandum" that will form a centrepiece of any deal reached this weekend, the CIA is likely to be designated as a kind of ongoing arbitrator checking into the activities of Mr Arafat's various security agencies, and then issuing reports to the State Department, and thence to Mr Netanyahu.
Assuming that the security memo is finalised, by no means an automatic assumption, the talks will move on to the question of Palestinian statehood. Or, more accurately from the Israeli point of view, the question of delaying Palestinian statehood.
The five-year interim negotiating period, specified under the Oslo accords, expires next May 4th. The "final status" issues such as resolving the fate of Jerusalem, the settlements, Palestinian refugee rights of return, limitations on Palestinian independence, have not been explored in any detail. And the likelihood of finalising a deal by May is, therefore, zero.
Mr Arafat has said that, if there is no negotiated deal by then, he will unilaterally declare statehood and that this will apply in practice to the territories he now runs, and in theory to those he hopes to gain. Mr Netanyahu, by way of response, has hinted that he might annex to Israel huge chunks of the West Bank.
The mooted American solution is that, this weekend, Israel indicate, semi-officially, that Palestinian statehood is an eventual possibility, and that, in return for such unprecedented Israeli recognition of their rights, the Palestinians agree to let the May deadline pass without unilateral declarations, giving the negotiators more time to reach an agreed permanent settlement.