Making the first of what will doubtless be many visits to the Middle East in his new post, the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, yesterday urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to put an end to five months of violence, but indicated that the Bush administration would attempt to take a lower profile in peace-brokering than had the Clinton administration.
Welcoming Mr Powell to Jerusalem, Israel's Prime Minister-elect, Mr Ariel Sharon, said he hoped Palestinian leaders would press their own people to halt the Intifada uprising. And hosting the Secretary of State in Ramallah, Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat said he sought a resumption of peace talks with Israel on the basis of proposals raised by the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak.
All three men are likely to be disappointed.
For Mr Powell, the main focus of this inaugural regional shuttle is supposed to be garnering Arab support for the continued battle against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. But while he suggested gently that the Bush administration would be attempting to take a back seat on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking - "In the end, we cannot want peace more than the parties themselves," he said delicately at a press conference with Mr Sharon - the grim reality of escalating violence is likely to quickly impose itself on a reluctant Washington.
Yesterday saw clashes in which a 45-year-old Palestinian man was killed by a stray bullet in a gun battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians near the West Bank town of Tulkarm, a teenage Palestinian was shot in Hebron and two Israelis were shot on the roads outside Ramallah where Mr Powell was meeting Mr Arafat. There was a big anti-Powell rally in Gaza. A report by the Israeli army, presented to Mr Powell yesterday, predicts that the Palestinians will soon step up their attacks on Israeli forces, Jewish settlements and roads in the West Bank and Gaza, and that extremist groups will attempt major bombings inside Israel. In response, the army would almost certainly step up its incursions into Palestinian-held territory in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr Powell spent the day doing his best to sound even handed - indicating support for Mr Sharon's key demand that Mr Arafat publicly urge the Palestinians to curb violence, and support too for a swift easing of Israel's economic and other sanctions against the Palestinians. "We discussed how it is necessary for all sides to move away from violence and incitement, and how it is necessary to lift the siege as soon as possible so that economic activity can begin again in the region," he said after meeting Mr Arafat.
But while Mr Powell clearly recognised the scale of the problem - "The challenge is how to get the process started," he said. "Who puts the first key in the door and starts to turn the locks . . ." - his assertion that both Mr Sharon and Mr Arafat "are dedicated to finding the answer" seems debatable.
Mr Sharon is adamant that all the blame lies with Mr Arafat, and is consequently conditioning any resumed peace talks on the Palestinian Authority taking "immediate action to stop acts of terror and violence". The oftrepeated theme of his press conference with Mr Powell was that "the government that I will lead will not conduct negotiations under the pressure of terror".
But Mr Arafat is equally adamant that Israel is the aggressor in a conflict that has seen more than 400 people killed, most of them Palestinians, and that Mr Sharon holds the key to a calmer future. Peace, he assured Mr Powell, was "a strategic choice of the Palestinian people".
Mr Arafat also argued that the peace proposals of the Barak government - which reportedly included an offer to withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip, almost all of the West Bank, and much of Arab East Jerusalem - could not be "erased" by Mr Sharon. On this issue, however, Mr Powell and the Bush administration are siding with Israel. Mr Barak, who also met Mr Powell this weekend, said that his proposals, never formally presented, became "null and void" with his election defeat three weeks ago. Mr Sharon reiterated the point yesterday. Mr Powell made no attempt to contradict them.