The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, is to visit the US for talks early next month, Israeli officials said yesterday, and he is likely to head into a whole new argument with the Bush Administration over the status of Jerusalem, hard on the heels of his last dispute over the war on terrorism.
Mr Sharon exploded in public anger with the Administration last week, accusing it of preparing to "sacrifice" Israel in order to "appease" the Arab world, because he thought that Washington intended to focus its anti-terror war solely on Osama bin Laden, and to ignore other regimes and militant organizations that are openly and violently hostile to Israel.
Mr Bush was personally infuriated by the verbal assault - which some aides to Mr Sharon now acknowledge was not merely counter-productive but also unwarranted. Indications from the US are that President Saddam Hussein's Iraq, for example, may well be targeted in the US-led coalition's continuing confrontation.
And the inclusion on President Bush's new list of 22 top terror suspects of Imad Mugniyah - the operations chief of the Lebanese-based Hizbullah and who is alleged to have masterminded a 1983 bombing in Lebanon which killed 241 US marines - also underlines the US readiness to pursue a campaign directed far beyond bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.
Where Mr Sharon appears to have a more firmly grounded cause for concern, however, is as regards the Bush Administration's vision of a permanent peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.
Having attempted to reduce its involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the administration had been about to change course and set out a new initiative, to be championed by the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, when the attacks of September 11th intervened. But the proposals have merely been set aside for the time being, rather than cancelled, and key elements have been leaking out in recent days.
Apart from an endorsement of Palestinian statehood, which Mr Sharon has already embraced in principle, the Bush proposals also envisage the withdrawal by Israel from the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, and provide for Jerusalem to serve as the capital of both the state of Israel and the state of Palestine.
The initiative, in short, appears to constitute a rather vaguer version of the "bridging proposals" put forward by President Clinton in the final months of his term in office, when he tried in vain to persuade the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, and Mr Sharon's predecessor as Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, to reach a permanent accord.
But while Mr Barak accepted the Clinton proposals, Mr Sharon most certainly would not have done - and he is certain, too, to make plain his objections to Mr Bush's version when the two meet next month.
Specifically, Mr Sharon utterly rejects a complete withdrawal from the West Bank - both because of the dismantling of Jewish settlements that would be involved, and because he is loath to relinquish control of the border area with Jordan and other "strategic" positions that he regards as critical to Israeli security.
Mr Sharon has always firmly opposed the notion of any formal Palestinian status in Jerusalem. Indeed, a hallmark of his seven months in office has been his effort to minimise the Palestinian Authority's activities in the city, as exemplified by his expulsion of Palestinian officials from their East Jerusalem headquarters, the Orient House.
Answering questions about the yet-to-be-unveiled US initiative, a State Department spokesman, Mr Richard Boucher, noted accurately on Wednesday that Mr Sharon "already sees that any (permanent) settlement would involve a Palestinian state."
Pressed as to whether Mr Sharon had also indicated a readiness to share Jerusalem, Mr Boucher had to acknowledge: "I don't think so."
The body of a Hamas activist, Hani Arahman (22), was found yesterday near Nablus in the West Bank. Israeli officials said his own bomb, which he been trying to plant along a major road, had blown him up.