Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, and the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, greet each other yesterday before a meeting in the prime minister's office in Jerusalem. Photograph: Jim Hollander/Reuters
While the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, shuttles relentlessly between Jerusalem, Ramallah and Cairo, the peace progress she is attempting to broker could be hit by yet another of Israel's coalition crises.
Ms Albright announced yesterday that Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators are to travel to Washington next week, to accelerate efforts to reach a permanent peace deal.
Mr Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority President whom she met in Ramallah, is to call at the White House on June 14th. The hopes are that these talks will, in turn, yield a three-way summit involving Mr Arafat, President Clinton and Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak. Ms Albright travels to Cairo today to meet Syria's Foreign Minister, Mr Farouq al Sharaa, to try to resume talks on the Israeli-Syrian track too.
The trouble is that Mr Barak's multi-party coalition is trembling again, and he may soon find himself preoccupied not with peacemaking but with electioneering. A motion to be debated in the 120-seat Knesset this afternoon calls for the dissolution of parliament and new elections. While passage of this motion would represent only the first step down the path to general elections - several further readings of the bill would be required in the coming weeks and months for it to take effect - it could certainly signal the beginning of the end for the current Barak coalition, less than a year after the government took office.
As things stood last night, Mr Barak lacked the necessary majority to head off the election bill. But a few hours is a long time in Israeli politics, and it could well be that, come voting time, he will have mustered the necessary votes.
As so often in Israel's volatile political past, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party is at the centre of the current Knesset storm. It is seeking a huge injection of government funding for its schools nationwide, and Mr Barak has been reluctant to provide it. If there's no money, said the Shas party leader, Mr Eli Yishai, last night, then the 17 Shas Knesset members "will vote to disperse the Knesset".
Mr Barak has been trying for months to appease Shas. But yesterday he broke off all talks with the party, and effectively issued an ultimatum: If Shas votes with the opposition today, it will get no more money from him, and the coalition partnership is over. If that means new elections, said Mr Barak, "I won't hesitate to go to the people . . . This government won't capitulate to threats." Mr Barak's aides say that he believes a deal with the Palestinians may be within reach, and is prepared, if necessary, to seek re-election with that Palestinian deal as his central campaign card.
Ironically, neither the government, nor the opposition, really wants new elections. The government wants to concentrate on peacemaking. The opposition Likud, led by the elderly Mr Ariel Sharon, needs to vote in a more vigorous leadership. But neither Mr Barak nor Mr Sharon hold the cards today.