While Israeli-Palestinian peace talks went into their sixth day yesterday in the pastoral setting of the Camp David retreat in Maryland, the atmosphere in the land whose fate is now under discussion was anything but pastoral.
In Hebron, in the West Bank, Jewish settlers and Palestinians got into fistfights for a second successive day. In the Kalandiya refugee camp, a convoy of Israeli buses was stoned and two of the vehicles were set alight. Near the settlement of Efrat, a few dozen young settlers established a symbolic new outpost before they were dragged away by troops.
In Jerusalem, opposition political parties - including Shas, Yisrael Ba'aliya and the National Religious Party, the three factions which left Mr Ehud Barak's coalition last week - met at City Hall to protest against any ceding of sovereignty to the Palestinians in the city.
And in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square - renamed in memory of the prime minister who was assassinated there almost five years ago - an estimated 150,000 Israelis gathered last night for a restrained and orderly demonstration, focused on the slogan "We must not lose the country", to urge the Israeli Prime Minister to come home from Camp David, insisting that he "has no mandate" for the territorial concessions they fear he is contemplating there.
A Likud Knesset member, Mr Limor Livnat, asserting that Mr Barak lacked a parliamentary majority for peacemaking, said that last night's rally was designed to show that the Prime Minister lacked majority support among the public as well - a claim that will only be tested when, or rather if, he returns from Camp David with an accord, and puts it to the public for approval in general elections or a referendum.
The right-wing opposition is adamant that a treaty is taking shape behind the media blackout at Camp David, and that it will involve concessions Mr Barak has always publicly promised to resist - on Jerusalem, Palestinian refugee rights, control of the Jordan Valley and other issues. "Barak has broken all his promises" the Likud leader, Mr Ariel Sharon, claimed yesterday.
Mr Barak did telephone several political colleagues yesterday to update them, but their relayed reports were contradictory. The Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, who snubbed Mr Barak by refusing to join him at Camp David, exuded bitter pessimism, saying the gaps between the sides "have not narrowed at all".
Later Mr Levy led Israeli officials who quickly knocked down a report from a Palestinian source, who refused to be named, saying "progress has been made"
"I am worried. . . as the negotiations are in a crisis" Mr Levy said, after his talk with Mr Barak.
President Clinton said there had been "some progress" but that success was not certain.