US: With the post-Arafat era beginning, the alliance between the US and Israel could be reaching a pivotal juncture, according to US politicians and analysts.
US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell said a transition of power from Mr Yasser Arafat, who is seriously-ill in hospital in Paris, could offer a chance to make progress.
"We are ready to seize this opportunity aggressively," he told the Financial Times in an interview, without elaborating. US President George Bush is expected to come under strong pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who arrives in Washington tomorrow for a summit meeting, to work with a new Palestinian leadership towards a rerun of the Camp David negotiations in 2000.
Some Congress members share Mr Blair's sense that there will be a new opportunity for the US to reassess what he called last week "the single most pressing political challenge in our world today".
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson said that "this is a great opportunity for the United States to engage - not to pressure Israel - but to bring the parties together. I hope the president takes up the ball and runs with it".
Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said that hopefully the Palestinians will choose a leader "who will make a deal and deliver".
Mr Blair will carry some weight as America's closest and most popular ally in conveying the European view that images of violence in Gaza and the West Bank encourage anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.
The Bush administration supports a two state solution as laid out in the "Road Map" detailed by Mr Bush on June 24th, 2002, but at the time the US President stressed that a "different leadership" was required on the Palestinian side.
Nevertheless, even with a new leadership, the Palestinians face a political landscape transformed in Israel's favour since 2000.
In his first term, the President has hardened long-standing US support for Israel, encouraged by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon who argued that the road to Jerusalem lay through Baghdad and forceful democratisation of the region, and by a strong drive for an increase in the Jewish vote in America. Mr Bush's instinctively close alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was strengthened after 9/11 by a sense of a shared fight against terrorism.
When Mr Sharon subsequently announced a withdrawal of settlements from Gaza without any consultation with Palestinians, Mr Bush - and Senator John Kerry - backed the action, and Washington made no significant objections when Israel began building a security wall on the West Bank.
The endorsement of Mr Sharon's unilateralism and the demonisation of Mr Arafat goes back to the last days of the Clinton administration, when outgoing President Bill Clinton told Mr Bush in no uncertain terms of his disappointment with the Palestinian leader.
Mr Clinton was embittered by his failure before leaving office to bring about a settlement at the Camp David summit when he brought Mr Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Mr Ehud Barak together.
He refused to accept the argument from the Arab side that Mr Arafat could not have persuaded Palestinians of the benefits of the plan, which they believed was vetted by the Israelis and which involved no right of return for refugees.
In a separate meeting with Mr Powell before he left office, Mr Clinton advised the new Secretary of State not to invest any capital in dealing with Mr Arafat.
His Middle East Envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, went further, telling Mr Powell, "Don't believe a word Arafat says, he's a con man", according to Israeli negotiator Mr Gilead Sher, cited by Clayton Swisher in his book The Truth About Camp David.
Mr Arafat could not make the transition from revolutionary to statesman and made a "colossal mistake" by walking away from Camp David, Mr Clinton wrote in his memoir, My Life.
When the Palestinian leader told Mr Clinton in one of their last conversations that he was a "great man", the outgoing president recalled replying acidly "I am not a great man, I am a failure and you have made me one."
Mr Clinton also blamed Arafat for the victory of Mr Sharon in the February 2001 election, when Israelis decided that if they did not have a partner for peace it was better to be led, as Clinton put it, by "the most aggressive, intransigent leader available".