THE Israeli PLO dialogue, which set hopes for comprehensive Middle East peace soaring three years ago, has deteriorated since the Israeli elections in May into a dialogue of the deaf.
Nothing could more clearly underline the unravelling of the peace process than two interviews given this week by the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians.
In the absence of any face to face meeting since Mr Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in Israel, Mr Yasser Arafat on Sunday night took the unprecedented step of appealing to Israelis over the heads of their government ministers, restating his commitment to a negotiated solution, and insisting he was dedicating "100 per cent of my efforts" to the fight against the Islamic extremist violence that has dogged the negotiations.
On the same day, Mr Netanyahu chose to ignore Mr Arafat's repeated pleas for a meeting, and instead addressed himself directly to the Palestinian people by giving an interview to Al Quds, the largest Palestinian daily newspaper.
In this he seemed to pour fuel on the flames of Palestinian frustration by curtly ruling out Palestinian statehood and flatly stating he saw no hope of reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians over the future status of Jerusalem.
In his television appearance, hindered by his own poor English and his interviewer's even weaker command of the language, Mr Arafat sought to indicate he still had some bargaining cards up his sleeve. Acknowledging that Mr Netanyahu had been ignoring him, the Palestinian Authority president suggested the prime minister would not be able to do so for much longer.
"I am the most important figure in the Middle East dilemma, the Middle East equation," he claimed. He added that if Israel refused to agree a compromise on statehood and Jerusalem, he would resort to international "arbitration" - a course he felt would be backed by the peace accords' sponsors, the United States and Russia.
But for all his characteristic feistiness, Mr Arafat, in fact, is dangerously short of options. His own people are furious with the Israeli government for failing to pull its troops out of Hebron, for refusing to lift most entry restrictions on Palestinian workers, and for giving a green light to expanded Jewish settlements.
Some of that anger is now being directed at Mr Arafat; he is increasingly discredited as the peace process stagnates and resented too for his security forces' recent heavy handed behaviour at demonstrations in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Tulkarm.
Last weekend in Cairo, Mr Arafat convened the central committee of his Fatah faction of the PLO and, for the first time since the peace process began, all 18 members turned up. Long time absentees, such as the PLO's "foreign minister", Mr Farouq Kaddoumi, who has bitterly opposed the entire process, presumably sense that a real moment of crisis has arrived.
Although the meeting broke up amid grand talk of a "total strategy for dealing with Mr Netanyahu's government, privately one aide was quoted as saying this week that Mr Arafat feels frustrated and hopeless".
If Mr Netanyahu fears all this Palestinian rage will boil over into violence - either endorsed by Mr Arafat or overwhelming him - he is not showing it.
There are constant rumours here about imminent high level meetings with Mr Arafat, and about plans taking shape for the Hebron pullout.
But in his ALQuds interview, Mr Netanyahu offered few rays of hope. In ruling out Palestinian statehood and dismissing Mr Arafat's claims to Jerusalem, he said he was merely being "more honest" than his Labour predecessors, but the frankness seemed brutal.
And even the talk of Mr Arafat's eroding status among the Palestinians apparently leaves Mr Netanyahu unmoved. "It's part of a campaign that is presumably supposed to pressure us," a spokesman for the prime minister said. "We are not going to be influenced."