The Middle East: Excluded from Wednesday's Aqaba summit, and reportedly furious that his prime minister had failed to so much as protest at his continuing de facto incarceration by Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat yesterday determinedly poured cold water on the first flickers of hope for a new Middle East peace process.
While many Israeli and Palestinian leaders have hailed the conciliatory statements made by the PA Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, in Aqaba, Mr Arafat, speaking to reporters at his battered, besieged "Muqata" headquarters in Ramallah, insisted Mr Sharon had failed to make any substantive commitments at the summit.
"Unfortunately, he has not yet offered anything tangible," Mr Arafat said of his Israeli nemesis. "What's the significance of removing a caravan from one location and then saying, 'I have removed a settlement'?"
Mr Arafat was referring to Mr Sharon's promise to immediately begin dismantling an unspecified number of the dozens of barely populated "unauthorized outposts" from the West Bank - Israeli officials say the work will begin within days - and the absence of any promise to evacuate long-established, more heavily populated settlements.
Palestinian officials insist publicly that there is no rift between Mr Arafat and Mr Abbas, whom he reluctantly appointed as prime minister under heavy domestic and international pressure two months ago. But privately, aides to Mr Arafat say he was angry that Mr Abbas did not mention his plight, nor even his name, during his public address in Aqaba.
President Bush, who is energetically hailing Mr Abbas as a Palestinian leader in whom he has faith, has said that Mr Arafat was not discussed in the private meetings.
The US Administration, which has now sent a monitoring team to the region to oversee the first tentative steps along the intended "road map" to peace and to Palestinian statehood, is intent on keeping Mr Arafat marginalized. Briefing European and other leaders after the Aqaba summit, US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell advised them not to maintain contact with the PA President. But several European leaders do intend to keep calling on Mr Arafat, arguing that his authority will be crucial to any substantive progress.
Notwithstanding Mr Arafat's derision, Mr Abbas is planning to meet again with Mr Sharon in the next few days, after spending this weekend attempting to secure an Intifada ceasefire with Hamas and other extremist groups.
He insists such a truce is close at hand, even though many in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Arafat-loyalist Fatah faction say they will defy Mr Abbas's call to end the "armed Intifada". In the interim, the Israeli army remains deployed around all the major West Bank cities, and has yet to implement any of the promised steps to ease Palestinian movement. It also made several arrests yesterday of alleged Intifada activists.
Israeli officials say they are waiting for the next Abbas-Sharon meeting, and agreement on the process by which the PA intends to thwart future bombing attempts and ensure control of the West Bank cities.
Jerusalem's City Council is now headed by its first elected ultra-Orthodox mayor. Uri Lupolianski, a charismatic politician widely admired for having previously established Israel's biggest volunteer organization, was elected mayor on Tuesday with a near 10 per cent majority over an independent candidate. Mr Lupolianski, who has promised to maintain the Orthodox-secular "status quo" in the city, had served as acting mayor in the four months since Ehud Olmert, now Mr Sharon's deputy prime minister, vacated the mayoralty to take a seat in the Knesset.
Ultra-Orthodox residents constitute a minority of Jerusalem's estimated 700,000 residents, but the turnout in their community was relatively high. Few of East Jerusalem's 150,000-200,000 Arabs voted in the election.