JERUSALEM - In what amounts to a sharp slap in the face for Israel, the US confirmed yesterday that it will be sending a representative to the emergency international conference on the Middle East peace process that Mr Yasser Arafat is convening in Gaza on Saturday, writes David Horovitz.
Israel, which yesterday reportedly spurned a belated Palestinian offer to attend, has described the very convening of the meeting as a breach of peace agreements - claiming it represents an attempted Palestinian resort to international arbitration, in place of the bilateral mechanisms for resolving disputes laid out in the Oslo accords.
Mr Arafat, however, insisted he was merely acting "to protect the peace process". And the US ambassador to Israel, Mr Martin Indyk, said he regarded the conference more as a briefing", and that it was not seen as representing "an alternative in any way" to direct Israeli Palestinian talks.
(David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report)