While all Middle Eastern eyes were last night fixed on Washington, where the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, was holding crucial talks with President Clinton, both Israeli and Palestinian officials were deeply pessimistic about the prospects for a peace accord in the US President's final three weeks in office.
And even in the unlikely event of a deal being reached, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, now involved in a new dispute with his own attorney-general, seems increasingly certain to lose next month's prime ministerial elections to the hardline Likud candidate, Gen Ariel Sharon, thus rendering any accord irrelevant.
His popularity plummeting, and his own colleagues publicly pessimistic about his prospects for re-election on February 6th, Mr Barak launched a scathing attack on Mr Arafat yesterday, accusing the Palestinian leader of "dragging his feet" to avoid the painful compromises involved in reaching a peace deal.
Israel, said the prime minister, had "very serious doubts" about Mr Arafat's commitment to peacemaking. And if no deal was attained, he warned, "the probability of regional deterioration will be much greater".
In meetings with leading generals, Mr Barak has been telling them to prepare for the possibility of a war that would "test" Israel's peace accords with Egypt and Jordan. Israel last week accepted Mr Clinton's latest peace formula, albeit with reservations. Prior to his talks with the President, Mr Arafat and his officials had drawn up a list of two dozen objections to the American proposals - objections, they insisted, that underlined their determination to make a success of negotiations, not to thwart them.
Detailing these objections, the Palestinian Communications Minister, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo noted, for example, that the Clinton Plan, while envisaging Israeli sovereignty in four to six per cent of the West Bank, did not include a map setting out where exactly such sovereign areas would be located.
How, he asked, could the Palestinians be expected to declare an "end to the conflict" with Israel, as the Clinton proposals state, before all elements of the accord had been implemented?
The Palestinians' key objection, however, is to the notion that they would abandon the demand for a "right of return" for three million or more Palestinian refugees, to areas within sovereign Israel.
The Clinton plan essentially provides for most refugees to return to an independent Palestinian state, not to Israel. In exchange for this concession, the plan essentially calls for Israel to relinquish sovereignty to the Palestinians at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and to accept Palestinian sovereignty in all Arab neighbourhoods in the city. Since Israel's population is about six million, five million of whom are Jews, an influx of three million Palestinians would radically alter the nature of the state, and there is wall-to-wall opposition in Israel to the "right of return".
While applauding it, the militant Hamas movement has not claimed responsibility for Monday's bombing in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya, in which several dozen Israelis were hurt. A group calling itself Vanguards of the Popular Army is claiming responsibility; the one man badly injured is believed to have been the bomber.
In the ongoing violence yesterday, a Palestinian farmer was shot dead in Gaza, apparently in the course of a gun battle. And an Israeli soldier was badly hurt in a clash in Hebron.
Even some members of his own cabinet are urging Mr Barak to abandon all efforts at negotiation with Mr Arafat until the violence stops. More damaging still to his image is a letter to him, leaked to the press, from the government Attorney-General, Mr Elyakim Rubinstein, who writes that, while not illegal, it is morally questionable for Mr Barak to be working towards a dramatic peace accord when he has formally resigned as prime minister and with elections just weeks away. A caretaker government, Mr Rubinstein adds, ought not to "create a political void".
Mr Barak castigated Mr Rubinstein yesterday, accusing him of acting out of personal political motives, and aides have been giving private briefings suggesting that the Attorney-General should resign. But the assault has rebounded. Mr Rubinstein is a widely respected jurist, and most legal analysts agreed with, or at least understood, the legal basis to the opinions he expressed in his letter. Indeed Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, though an outspoken supporter of peace efforts, sided with the Attorney-General, declaring that he wouldn't stay on in his job "for a single minute" if Mr Rubinstein were dismissed.