So the Arab "leaders" are threatening to threaten. Problem is, after such decades of being twisted and co-opted by the Americans, and by the Israelis, there's not much credibility here, not even with themselves not to mention anyone else. Hence only serious actions, not more garbled words, are going to convince the big and powerful players otherwise.

The Arabic-language al-Watan quoted what it described as a high-ranking Jordanian source as saying that King Abdullah, now visiting Saudi Arabia, will carry the message to U.S. President George W. Bush when he visits Washington this week.

"It will be an Arab message, particularly a Saudi one, that U.S. interests and relations with the Arab states will be in danger if Washington did not try to end Israel's terrorist policy in the region," the paper quoted the Jordanian source as saying.

It said that in their talks in Riyadh, the Jordanian and Saudi leaders agreed on the need to exert joint efforts to "end the suffering of the Palestinian people and lift a siege imposed by Israel on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat."

King Abdullah, who arrived in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for a two-day visit, is scheduled to meet President Bush on Friday. He was chairman of the last Arab summit, held in Amman last year.

Arafat has been confined by Israeli tanks to his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah since December, following a series of suicide attacks inside Israel.

The Bush administration has been taking an increasingly tough line against Arafat in recent days, drawing praise from Israel and a call for U.S. sanctions against the Palestinian leadership.

Washington has suspended a ceasefire mission to the Middle East by its envoy Anthony Zinni. The retired Marine Corps general ended his second trip to the region two weeks ago.

Bush has said he was "very disappointed" with Arafat for not doing enough to rein in militants behind the attacks on Israel.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan al-Muasher said on Sunday that King Abdullah plans to explain to Bush "the danger of talking about suspending the peace process or contacts with the Palestinian Authority."

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a key regional ally of the United States, has repeatedly urged Bush to push Israel to help end 16 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

As the 15 EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels discussed the escalating violence in the Middle East, Sweden openly criticised the U.S. stance towards Arafat and said it risked exacerbating regional tensions.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was expected to speak up on behalf of Arafat but also to urge the Palestinian leader to do more to rein in Arab militants, the diplomats said. "Mr Solana will tell the ministers that we need more, not less, Palestinian Authority at this time," said one. "The alternative to the Palestinian Authority is Palestinian anarchy," the diplomat added.

Over the weekend, U.S. President George W. Bush said he was disappointed with Arafat's efforts to date in trying to halt the violence, sparking fears in Europe that Washington has all but given up on the Palestinian leader.

"I think it is very dangerous if the United States is supportive of the Israeli government and of the confrontation (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon has tried to use in the latest weeks instead of supporting peace talks," Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh told reporters on arrival in Brussels.

"The only way to go forward is to continue the peace talks, and if we deny Arafat and deny the Palestinian Authority we just increase the tensions in the region," Lindh said. "I think that is extremely worrying," she added.

European External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten echoed her concern, though he did not cite the United States by name. "We can't just wish away either side in this (Middle East peace process)," he said in televised remarks.

"There is no alternative to the Mitchell plan," he added, referring to proposals by an international panel led by ex-U.S. Senator George Mitchell last year for a ceasefire to be followed by confidence-building measures and renewed peace talks.

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine called for continuing EU engagement in Middle East peacemaking, telling his colleagues: "This is no time to give up."

The ministers were expected to issue a statement cataloguing the financial damage caused by Israel to projects in the Palestinian Authority funded by the European Union.

"The Union considers that there is absolutely no link between the struggle against terrorism and the destruction of projects financed by European taxpayers to improve the life of the Palestinians," one diplomat said.

However, diplomats said the statement was likely to fall short of France's demand for financial compensation for the reprisal damage, estimated by the European Commission at 17.3 million euros ($15.34 million).

[The Guardian, London, 28 January]: Within the next few weeks, if Ariel Sharon has his way, the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will leave his besieged compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah on a one-way ticket to nowhere. Mr Arafat is under virtual house arrest. His compound is ringed by Israeli tanks and he hasn't been allowed out since before Christmas. The Sharon dream is that sometime soon, Mr Arafat will decide he can't take it any more, and head off into exile.

After another suicide bombing in Jerusalem yesterday, and with the Americans now piling on the pressure as relentlessly as the Israelis, Yasser Arafat's world is shrinking around him. According to Israeli officials, Mr Sharon is determined that Arafat must go. What the Israeli prime minister is waiting for is a telephone call, perhaps from a third party intermediary - France, maybe, or one of the EU envoys - to float an idea. How would Mr Sharon react, the caller might ask, if Mr Arafat were to seek to leave Ramallah for medical treatment? In Paris, perhaps, where his wife Suha now lives, or Kuwait or Egypt? And Mr Sharon will say yes, on one condition. Mr Arafat won't be coming back.

This, said a well-placed Israeli official the other day, is the OK Corral. Two old men are facing each other down. It's personal, and it goes back a long way. Only one of them can emerge a winner. And Mr Sharon is determined that it will be him. It's 20 years since he first had Mr Arafat in his sights, in Beirut at the start of Israel's disastrous Lebanese engagement. He forced the Palestinian leader into exile - to Tunis, on that occasion - and he intends to do so again.

To Mr Sharon, the Oslo peace process, under which Yasser Arafat was allowed to leave Tunis, set up his headquarters in the West Bank and Gaza and take control of towns like Ramallah, was a terrible mistake. No peace is possible as long as Mr Arafat is around. That's why he must go.

And if he does go, what then? The Sharon plan, as outlined to me this week, is based on the conviction that there are plenty of Palestinian officials who would be prepared to do a deal on Israeli terms. Israel's continuing behind-the-scenes contacts with Palestinian leaders, using, among others, Sharon's own son as an envoy, have led him to believe that senior Palestinian negotiators also see Mr Arafat as an obstacle in the way of an agreement and an end to the violence which has killed more than 1,000 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians, in the past 15 months.

We have no way of knowing if this is simply wishful Israeli thinking or if it is based on a genuine assessment of privately expressed Palestinian sentiments. But the fact that these ideas are now being floated indicates that Israel believes it may be about to win an important victory and finally see the back of a man who to many, in government and among voters, has never been more than an untrustworthy terrorist.

But why should Yasser Arafat, a man who has devoted his entire life to fighting for a Palestinian state, throw in the towel now? The Israelis seem to believe that as an elderly man in indifferent health, he may no longer have the stomach to go on fighting. They believe he is psychologically unable to do a deal, that he has been wheeling and dealing for so long that he can do nothing else. They refuse to accept that he may be holding out because until now - even at Camp David in 2000, when Ehud Barak offered him more than had ever been offered before - he has not been able to negotiate a deal that would be acceptable to the Palestinian people.

But suppose Ariel Sharon's dream is no more than that. Israel has a Plan B, and even a Plan C. Plan B is what the Israelis call "separation" - at its crudest, this means building a fence to separate Israel from the West Bank and Gaza. The problem is that Israeli settlements, dotted all over the Palestinian territories, will need to be fenced off as well, as will their access routes. That means thousands of miles of fences, and thousands of armed guards to patrol them.

Plan C looks even less attractive: reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Tear up the Oslo accords and go back to pre-1993, with Israeli conscripts patrolling every Palestinian town and city. Some Israeli security chiefs are reported to believe they could quickly arrest all known Palestinian activists, lock them up and put an end to the shootings and suicide bombings. Israeli voters are unlikely to be keen, however, as the reason they backed Oslo was that it got their sons and daughters out of Gaza, and they will not want to see Israel re-emerge as a full-scale occupying power.

So Plan A remains the favourite, with Yasser Arafat heading off into the sunset, drummed out of town by the biggest, baddest cowboy. The Americans, say the Israelis, are looking the other way, their attention is elsewhere. They seem to have little or no interest in dealing with Yasser Arafat again. For Ariel Sharon, therefore, now is the time to say a final goodbye to the man he's been battling for more than two decades.

* Robin Lustig presents The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4