Under the patronage of a worried Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, the Palestinian Authority (PA) President, Mr Yasser Arafat, and the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, yesterday vented their frustrations with each other over the collapse of the peace process. Close to seven years ago both men were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in launching the same process.
So grim are Israeli-Palestinian relations these days that Mr Peres, in an earlier meeting with Mr Mubarak, felt the need to deny reports that Israel is preparing to destroy the PA and perhaps even target Mr Arafat himself.
"We don't have any intention whatsoever, neither to ground attack or to attack Arafat," Mr Peres said later. "Arafat, in our eyes, is the representative of the Palestinians."
Mr Peres also used the teteatete with Mr Mubarak, according to Israeli reports last night, to issue tentative feelers about ways to solve the Palestinian refugee problem - one of the central factors in the collapse of last summer's Camp David peace summit.
Details of what Mr Peres proposed were sketchy - a reflection of the fact that, as far as his prime minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, is concerned, the foreign minister shouldn't really be holding any substantive peace talks at all. Mr Sharon insists there must be a prolonged and total cessation of Intifada violence before negotiations can resume.
Indeed, Mr Sharon seemed to be somewhat nonplussed by the fact that Mr Peres was even meeting Mr Arafat. He said he had been informed by Mr Peres in advance of the session, as their coalition agreement provides, but that it had all been very last-minute - an initiative by Mr Mubarak, who has seen his own population become increasingly agitated as the death toll mounted in almost 10 months of Intifada conflict.
When the three leaders sat down together, it seems, Mr Mubarak took a back seat. Mr Peres reportedly pleaded with Mr Arafat to bring his violent militants into line, and put a stop, especially, to attacks on Israeli troops at Rafah, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. Mr Arafat urged Mr Peres to rein in settlers, some of whom have staged reprisals after shootings, and to release taxes that Israel is withholding from the PA - in order, Mr Arafat said, for him to pay his security personnel to work to prevent violence, as Israel is demanding.
Reports from the session suggest a great deal of recrimination, and little progress, although Mr Peres, ever the optimist, spoke of "a sense of hope" and Mr Arafat thanked him for helping put a stop to Mr Sharon's public characterisation of him as a "murderer" and "a pathological liar".
Back in Jerusalem, hammering another apparent nail into the peace coffin, the Israeli cabinet decided in principle to begin a building project at Halutza.