It provided for autonomy in the Israeli-occupied territories for five years, in the hope that a cooling-off period would produce new habits and new attitudes that could lead to a Palestinian-Israeli agreement.

The point of a new government would be to try to meet international requirements that the Palestinian Authority accept the right of Israel to exist, forswear violence and accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements.

The basic supports of the Palestinian-Israeli agreement have collapsed.

Every major Palestinian-Israeli agreement has been reached with active Egyptian involvement, in close collaboration with the United States.

It is reluctantly taking part in the "peace process" to make sure it isn't left out in a narrower settlement, and it will do what it can to torpedo a Palestinian-Israeli agreement without it.

And then there are the United States policy makers who called the King to the negotiations at the Wye Plantation in Maryland last week in the final fraught days before the Palestinian-Israeli agreement.

He took credit for the new Palestinian-Israeli agreement and progress in Bosnia as "examples of the imperative for United States leadership."

The United States, Europe and Israel imposed their boycott because Hamas supports terrorism and refuses to recognize Israel, renounce violence or honor existing Palestinian-Israeli agreements.

In May 1994, following the Palestinian-Israeli agreements known as the Oslo Accords, a phased transfer of governmental authority to the Palestinians took place.

The opposition groups have seized on the attack on Iraq as proof that the American sponsor of the Palestinian-Israeli agreements is an enemy of Arabs and of Islam.