In October 1996 President Clinton summoned Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, to Washington. Israel's secretive opening of an archaeological tunnel alongside Jerusalem's Temple Mount had ignited furious Israeli-Palestinian gun battles, and peace hopes were fast receding. Mr Clinton urged the two leaders to calm tensions and reach a new peace deal. Three months later, his involvement bore fruit, when Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat signed the accord that took Israeli troops out of most of the West Bank town of Hebron.
Now, Mr Clinton is attempting a similar gambit. All three men will be in New York next week for the UN General Assembly. So the President is trying to arrange another summit, to revive a peace process that has not moved forward since that Hebron deal was signed. Far from incidentally, of course, any presidential success on the Middle East front might deflect just a little bit of media attention away from the Lewinsky scandal. Mr Netanyahu has indicated that he might be willing to attend. Mr Arafat is proving more reluctant, making his acceptance conditional on prior approval by the Israelis of a long-stalled American peace proposal that provides for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from another 13 per cent of the West Bank.
Since Mr Clinton's special envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, has spent the past week here trying in vain to secure precisely such Israeli approval, it seems unlikely that Mr Netanyahu will now suddenly relent. So the prospects for the summit look slim. And the chances of anything substantive emerging from it, even if it were to take place, are almost non-existent.
Palestinian readiness to make concessions will hardly have been increased by the shooting dead of a 16-year-old student in the West Bank village of Beitunia yesterday by an Israeli motorist. Or by a new Israeli decision to build 600 homes at the settlement of Yitzhar, currently home to just 60 families, where two settlers were killed by Palestinian gunmen last month.
Anxious to encourage further Israeli building, 35 Israelis took up temporary residence before dawn yesterday at Har Homah, the disputed hillside on the edge of Jerusalem where Mr Netanyahu has said he plans to build 6,000 homes. The Israelis, members of the right-wing Betar youth group, called on Mr Netanyahu to accelerate construction work. Police folded up their tents and dispersed them after a few hours. Mr Netanyahu's office promised that the first buildings would be up by 2000.