Pressure to arrange summit talks to bring an end to Israeli-Palestinian violence was continuing last night in spite of an apparent reluctance on the part of both Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, and the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, to attend.
The White House position on a summit had appeared to shift yesterday from insisting on certain preconditions - such as a clear end to violence, with statements from Israeli and Palestinian leaders - to saying that it would be unrealistic to expect all violence would have to end before the two sides could meet.
Meanwhile President Clinton continued to make telephone calls to Middle East leaders and to confer with his national security staff.
Vice-President Al Gore interrupted his campaigning to return to the White House to attend high-level briefings on the situation.
The clashes rolled through their sixteenth day yesterday, but were much less intense than Thursday's.
A Palestinian was killed during exchanges of fire in Hebron; there was shooting too outside Ramallah, scuffles and stone-throwing at the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem's Old City and, late on Thursday night, an Israeli missile attack on a Palestinian police academy in Jericho. The Israeli military said that this strike, in which no one was hurt, was to avenge the burning of an ancient synagogue, the "Peace Upon Israel", by a Palestinian mob a few hours earlier.
About 100 people, nearly all of them Palestinians, have been killed in the fighting, which yesterday prompted another rash of anti-Israeli demonstrations in Arab capitals. Egyptian police used clubs to keep back 10,000 marching students in Cairo, and thousands gathered in the Jordanian capital, Amman, to demand the expulsion of Israel's ambassador and the scrapping of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.
Worried by the rise in tension in their own territories, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah have been publicly castigating Israel for the Palestinian deaths but privately imploring Mr Arafat to do his part in reducing the violence.
To that end, Mr Mubarak wanted to host summit talks tonight in Sharm al-Sheikh bringing together Mr Barak, Mr Arafat and President Clinton. However, Mr Arafat insisted that Israel first lift its military blockade of West Bank cities and apparently refused an American precondition - a public call by him and Mr Barak for an end to violence.
The Israeli leader was also ready with a list of his own demands, including the rearrest by Mr Arafat of dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who have been released from Palestinian jails in recent days.
United Nations Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan was today to meet Mr Mubarak in the Red Sea town of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian government press office said late last night.
Mr Annan had said after meeting Mr Arafat in Gaza City that he expected a Middle East summit to take place in the next 48 hours.
Friday prayers in Jerusalem passed in relative quiet only because Israel refused entry to worshippers aged under 45. Hence there were just 3,500 Muslims in the Haram al-Sharif compound.
At the funeral of Vadim Norzitch, one of the two Israeli reservists stabbed and beaten to death in Ramallah on Thursday, the dead man's brother, Michael, having earlier examined the mutilated body, tearfully described the killing as the work of "the devil's children".
Meanwhile, as the bodies of American sailors killed in Aden began arriving in Germany en route to the US, the Pentagon has now confirmed that 17 US sailors died in the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour.
Some 37 US embassies in the Middle East and adjoining regions have been closed until next week as a precaution against further attacks like the one on the British embassy in Sanaa, capital of Yemen.