ISRAEL is ready to hold round the clock negotiations with the Palestinians until agreement is reached on all arrangements for its long overdue Hebron troop withdrawal, the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has said.
Speaking to Israeli reporters on his flight to the Middle East crisis summit in Washington, he was clearly determined to show himself committed to resuscitating peace efforts. Mr Netanyahu acknowledged that it would now be difficult to persuade some of his hardline colleagues to support the much delayed Hebron pull out, but that he was ready to proceed.
While insisting that he would not close the new entrance to an ancient Jerusalem Old City tunnel that provoked last week's violence, Mr Netanyahu did stress that he was bent on "resurrecting that trust, that security, that understanding" that had been destroyed.
Mr Netanyahu's positive tone reflects his limited room for manoeuvre. Internationally perceived as having provoked the fighting, which killed more than 50 Palestinians and 14 Israelis, he does not now want to blamed as well for destroying President Clinton's personal salvage effort.
At the same time Mr Netanyahu knows that he will be castigated over any deal on Hebron by Jewish settler leaders and by his more hardline coalition colleagues.
Leading aides to Mr Netanyahu believe he will face down these critics by assuring them that, once the Hebron pull out is completed, there will be little further progress with the Palestinians.
Crucially, the aides say, Mr Netanyahu will not sanction a Palestinian state, and will do his utmost to limit Mr Yasser Arafat's authority to the main centres he controls today - effectively confining Mr Arafat's territory to major Palestinian cities, ringed by the Israeli army.
Such a stance would certainly mitigate the far right criticism, but, equally certainly, it would be quite unacceptable to Mr Arafat and his people - and would thus surely constitute a recipe for further violence.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials announced yesterday that they would urge Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority to extradite or put on trial up to 200 Palestinian policemen they say opened fire on Israeli soldiers last week.
In some cases, Israel has acknowledged that the Palestinians were provoked into firing by soldiers and settlers who shot first. But in most others, it insists that uniformed Palestinian policemen deliberately initiated the gunfire.
Official Palestinian sources argue with equal vehemence that their personnel opened fire only when they came under Israeli gunfire, although they do say that there were incidents of uncontrolled gunfire from Hamas and other armed activists.