The Palestinians will begin another campaign at the United Nations on Monday for the deployment of international observers to help quell Intifada violence. While Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who opposes the idea, can probably rely on the United States to block it, he is coming under increasing pressure, both at home and abroad, over his handling of the confrontation, which is now deep into its 11th month.
The United Nations Security Council is to hold an open meeting on the Middle East on Monday - at which the Palestinians, with considerable international support, but near-certain American opposition, will push for the dispatch of an observer force.
They will also call for Israel to relinquish their unofficial Jerusalem headquarters, the Orient House and several other East Jerusalem offices that were taken over by Israel last week following a Palestinian suicide bombing.
But even if that diplomatic initiative is stalemated, Mr. Sharon will still be under heavy pressure. Domestically, his approval rating is falling sharply: a Gallup opinion poll published yesterday showed public satisfaction with his performance down 10 per cent in just a week to 49 per cent, and indicated that 70 per cent of his country folk do not believe he can halt the violence.
Perhaps most troubling for Mr. Sharon is that a full 51 per cent of those surveyed believe that the Israeli army is not using sufficient force, compared with only 17 per cent who believe that too much force is being employed. On a narrow political level, that high proportion seeking a tougher response must worry Mr Sharon because his main potential rival, the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been consistently advocating a tougher line. On a wider international level, it will be troubling because it is precisely the opposite of what the Americans, the Russians and much of Europe are suggesting.
While the Bush administration, for instance, has repeatedly expressed sympathy with Israel over the ongoing series of suicide bombings it has suffered, and has urged the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to take firm action to stop such attacks, it has also pressed Mr. Sharon to "show restraint" and taken public issue with the prime minister over both his policy of killing alleged Intifada orchestrators and sending troops intermittently into Palestinian-held territory.
Inside his coalition, some of the Labour party ministers are clamouring for a change in policy - which would see Israel agreeing to the deployment of an American-only observer force, the ditching of his demand for a seven-day period with no violence as a pre-condition for any peace talks and, possibly, a unilateral withdrawal from significant areas of occupied West Bank land.
Thus Mr Sharon is in the unhappy position of having failed to achieve a military halt to the violence, of angering both outside allies and moderate coalition partners with what they consider to be overly hawkish polices, and of losing public support for what is deemed to be excessive restraint.
While the prime minister would doubtless wish to avoid a humiliating volte-face, the idea of a solely American observer force might appeal to him as a possible compromise. The Palestinians have long been demanding a multi-party force, which Mr Sharon has firmly rejected - asserting that it would do nothing to halt the violence. But he might have fewer reservations about an American force, which he would deem more sympathetic, and the proposal has the added advantage for him of now being backed by Egypt - an infuriated peace partner that he may want to appease. Osama al-Baz, a veteran adviser to President Hosni Mubarak, noted yesterday that while Egypt would prefer observers drawn from Canada and Europe as well as the US, if Israel insisted on the US alone, this would be better than nothing.
Last night a Palestinian man was killed in a fierce gunbattle that erupted after an Israeli tank and bulldozer crossed into Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said. Mr Abdo Abu Bakra (29) died from a gunshot wound to his head after Palestinian gunmen opened fire following the Israeli incursion.