Barak sees Arafat as having abdicated his role and has lost confidence in him as an effective interlocutor. Given this perception of Arafat and the possibility of a second front with Lebanon and Syria if Annan fails to arrange a prisoner swap, Barak undoubtedly believes he has little choice but to edge closer to an emergency unity government including Likud and its leader, Ariel Sharon. The current government is unlikely to carry out its undefined threat to attack Palestinian Authority assets as long as Annan, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov are in the region and Clinton is planning to intervene personally. But the anticipation of a unity government in the 'street' of Gaza and West Bank and the emergence of an alternative leadership among vengeful Palestinians will continue to fuel the violence. With neither of the leaders showing the leadership demanded by the situation, even America's limited goal of stopping the violence may be unattainable in the near term.
Prospects are now bleak.
The past ten days have undercut some of the fundamental assumptions that underlay the draft agreements tabled at Camp David. Each side will claim that the other cannot be trusted to provide secure access to the other's holy sites under its sovereignty. Given the rioting at Nazareth, Jaffa and elsewhere within the Green Line, no one should expect Israel to agree to accept Palestinian refugees within its borders. Considering the obvious difficulty the Israel Defence Force has experienced trying to protect sites like Joseph's Tomb, the concept of Israeli settlements continuing to exist under Palestinian sovereignty is probably untenable. The relatively close security cooperation between the Palestinian and Israeli security forces, which was essential to the arrangements envisaged at Camp David, will be very hard to re-establish.