ANY hopes that Thursday's killing of seven Israeli schoolgirls at a tourist site just inside Jordan might shock the region's disputatious parties into greater conciliation appear to be disappearing, with Israel yesterday confirming plans to begin work next week on the controversial Jewish housing project in East Jerusalem.
Despite warnings by his security advisers that the arrival of bulldozers at Har Homa could provoke "a wave of violent protest" from the Palestinians, and despite a Thursday night 130-2 vote at the UN General Assembly calling on Israel to scrap plans for the 6,500 home neighbourhood, the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, and his ministers, in a rare display of unanimity resolved to press ahead.
"Nothing will deter me," Mr Netanyahu said in a newspaper interview. "If we give in now," he added, "it would prove that we have no backbone, and no sovereignty in our capital city."
The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, is today hosting US, European and Arab representatives at a conference in Gaza designed, he has said, "to save the peace process".
Infuriated both by the Har Homa project, and by the size of the latest West Bank land handover proposed by Israel, Mr Arafat accused Mr Netanyahu of contravening "the content and the spirit" of the peace accords. "This is the worst crisis since the Oslo process began," he said. "We are marching into the abyss."
The Israelis have made clear that, should more violence erupt, they would hold Mr Arafat responsible. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, charged that Mr Arafat's PLO and the Islamic extremists of Hamas were sitting together, "planning disturbances".
In a similar frame of mind, Mr Levy on Thursday drew a causal link between the shootings at the Naharayim tourist site and King Hussein's recent public criticisms of Israeli policy.
But other analysts are rejecting this kind of assessment, pinning as much blame on Mr Netanyahu as on King Hussein for Thursday's attack.
In response to King Hussein's criticisms, Mr Netanyahu reportedly let slip a remark about the king's "instability", and then issued a denial that did little to calm the anger at the royal palace in Amman. King Hussein is a father figure to his troops, the Israeli military commentator, Mr Ron Ben Yishai, noted yesterday. "And when the daddy, is fuming, the children open fire.
King Hussein insisted in Amman on Thursday night that he had been "fully within my responsibility" to publicise his concerns about Mr Netanyahu's policies, but stressed that, in warning "of the possibility of violence, I never thought that it would break out the way it did." The king is planning to visit the grieving families in the next few days.
Thursday's gunman, Ahmad Mustapha (25), is apparently turning out under initial questioning to be neither a political extremist nor a religious fundamentalist. His family, from Irbid in the south of Jordan, is reportedly insisting he is insane - the convenient, much used excuse for most such recent incidents of gunmen on either side opening fire.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report
. Mr Arafat hopes to pile international pressure on the Jewish state at the Gaza meeting today. Western diplomats said the killing of the seven Israeli schoolgirls may cast a shadow on the meeting.
Mr Arafat has said the gathering will discuss "clear Israeli violations" of the Israel PLO peace agreement "that undermine the peace process and threaten the whole Middle East".
Palestinians see Mr Netanyahu's decision to build the houses for Jews in East Jerusalem was detrimental to their aspirations of establishing an independent, state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as capital.