PRESIDENT Hosny Mubarak's reluctance to attend a Middle East summit in Washington this week signals a new low in Egyptian Israeli relations and reflects the Arab world's deep disillusionment with the peace process.
As leader of the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state, Mr Mubarak is usually at the centre of any mediation efforts between the Palestinians and Israelis. But his attempts to defuse the crisis, including calls for Israel to honour its commitments to the Oslo peace accords, have so far come to naught.
An offer to hold talks in Cairo last weekend was rejected by the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, in favour of a summit in the United States. Since then Mr Mubarak has refused to attend the summit unless it has clear goals and Israel would agree to abide by previous peace agreements.
This is the latest in a series of crises between Israel and its oldest Arab ally since Mr Netanyahu came to power in June. The goodwill generated by a meeting between the two men in July quickly dissipated with the lack of tangible progress on the ground.
"He was hardly back from (visiting me in) Cairo before he was telling the whole world he could not accept the results of negotiations reached with the Palestinians and approved by his predecessors, an angry Mr Mubarak told the German magazine De Spiegel in September.
Last month, frustration with the new Israeli leadership boiled over in a war of words that had Egyptian officials calling Mr Netanyahu "paranoid" and "in need of psychiatric help".
Against this background, the opening of the tunnel close to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem last week was the seen by the overwhelmingly Muslim Egyptian public as a calculated provocation by the Israeli government. Militant groups have called for a jihad to free Jerusalem from "the hands of the Jews".
In an interview published in a party newspaper yesterday Mr Mubarak placed the blame for the current crisis in the Middle East firmly on the shoulders of Mr Netanyahu and warned that further Israeli foot dragging on implementing terms of peace accords would result in a new intifada, far more bloody than the last: "The new intifada will not be with stones, but with something more, and that's what we've seen pictures of in the last few days."