Special Reports: Palestine-Israel Conflicts >>
With the election on Tuesday of the new leadership of Fatah, the main force in Palestinian politics, international attention now returns to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
Since U.S. President Barack Obama made his key policy speech to the Arab nations in Cairo on June 4, Israel and the Palestinians have been insisting the other party must act first in order to resume the stalled peace process.
Israel says the Palestinians must come to the negotiating table without preconditions and vice versa. Yet both sides have seemingly laid down preconditions of their own.
The Palestinians want to see a total freeze on settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and a release of Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli jails. For its part, Israel is insisting the Palestinian state be demilitarized and the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state.
These political realities appear to have left a muddled stalemate on the ground. Despite that, the main peace-brokering force, the United States, is pushing for an early resumption of negotiations.
As far as Washington is concerned, one piece of good news did emerge from the week-long Fatah congress: many of the newly elected leaders come from the pro-peace camp within the organization.
"The majority of the recently elected members of the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council are supporters of the peace process," said Nabil Kukali, the founder of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.
However, the view in Israel is that there is really no one with whom to do business on the other side. As the congress was wrapping up in Bethlehem, just a few miles away Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was telling members of the U.S. Democratic Party that the Palestinians are living in Hamastan and Fatahland.
The division between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, coupled with what Israel sees as the tough stance adopted by Fatah this week, "buries any possibility to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians in the next few years," Lieberman said on Monday.
For this reason and because of the current Israeli government's stated desire not to give up too much territory to the Palestinians and its hope to leave as many settlements as intact as possible, the Israeli government is determined to foot-drag.
Israeli and Palestinian analysts alike are of the opinion that if and when peace talks resume, Israel will try to make them last as long as possible, while the Palestinians will push for an early conclusion.
"Everything is up in the air," said Galia Golan, a political analyst and a senior figure with Israel's left-wing Peace Now movement.
In terms of whose court the ball is currently in, Golan believes Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has played a strong hand. By saying negotiations are dependent on a settlement freeze, Abbas has pushed the ball firmly into the U.S.-Israeli side of the court.
A meeting is expected later this month between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. special envoy George Mitchell. It is in this forum that the key issue of settlements will be thrashed out.
Mitchell and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said publicly they believe agreement is near.
One of the possibilities will be an agreement that there will be a settlement freeze for six months, which will give the Israelis room to breathe and show the Palestinians and the Arab world they have done something.
The Arab world is attaching its support for the peace process to a settlement freeze, although that support has waned somewhat in recent days.
The Saudis, the main Arab players, say they do not want to see incremental steps, with Israel being rewarded with better relations with the Arab world in exchange for a settlement freeze. Israel, they say, has a legal duty to end all settlement activity and withdraw from the territories.
On a day-to-day basis, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is leading the conversation with Mitchell and his team. Indeed, some analysts are now watching Barak closer than anyone to determine which way Israel is headed.
However, even that is not clear-cut. Given the complex nature of Israeli politics, Barak's views on the peace process are very different from those of most of his coalition colleagues. Barak hails from the ostensibly dovish Labor party, while most cabinet members are perceived as sitting in the hawkish camp.
Even if there is desire on the part of Netanyahu and Barak to move forward, they are held hostage by their political allies, some of whom are the champions of the settler movement.
This is why, like the Israelis, the Palestinians say they do not have a serious peace partner. "Peace doesn't depend only on the willingness of the Palestinians, but also on the Israeli side, for 'one hand can not clap, you need at least two', a local wisdom says," according to Kukali.
Israel is hoping at the same time to hold peace talks with Arab states, both its immediate neighbors and those further afield. The Arab Peace Initiative, first mooted in 2002, calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory in exchange for a normalization of relations with the Arab world.
On several occasions Netanyahu has called publicly for immediate talks with Arab leaders without preconditions. However, the Israeli premier knows well that while he may be able to make some progress in bilateral talks with Syria, any comprehensive peace deal with the surrounding Arab world is entirely dependent first and foremost on a final-status agreement with the Palestinians.
For the time being, Abbas' speech last week at the Fatah congress has set the tone in the Palestinian camp. Now it will take a few days for the dust to settle following the conclusion of the sometimes explosive congress.
The key Fatah Central Committee, which is filled with new faces, has a large degree of influence on what happens within the Palestinian National Authority. Once its views become clear, it will almost certainly be up to Israel to make the next move along the very slow path towards resumption of peace talks.