TEL AVIV: When US envoy Anthony Zinni tried to broker an Israeli- Palestinian ceasefire late last year, he failed because he seemed to lack the leeway to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, say diplomats.

As he returns this week for another attempt, success will hinge on whether he can push the Israelis - and not just the Palestinians - toward compromise.

Signs of conciliation are no surprise in advance of high- profile US intervention, but the Israeli leader may not have his eye only on Zinni. Vice President Dick Cheney, now on a Middle East tour intended to rally support for a possible US attempt to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is expected in Israel March 18.

“For Sharon, what is going on with the Palestinians is bad and bloody,” says a European diplomat, “but Iraq and Iran are strategic.” The diplomat’s idea is that Sharon will do what he can to encourage any US plan to defang states in the region that pose a major military threat to Israel.

Statements last week by President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell suggest that the US is toning down its support for Sharon’s hardline tactics in countering the Palestinians’ resistance against Israeli occupation, but the substance of any shift will be measured when Zinni arrives, perhaps by the end of the week.

The retired general is inserting himself into an increasingly deadly struggle.

The level of violence feels to some like a turning point. The Israeli daily Ha’aretz editorialized that Israelis and Palestinians may have hit the “point of attrition at which an initial compromise can be forged.”

No matter what Sharon himself might be inclined to do, he must contend with a largely hawkish Cabinet that mostly favours sterner military action against the Palestinians, not moves toward conciliation.

In his earlier attempts to reach a ceasefire, which began last November, Zinni appeared to diplomats he encountered to concentrate almost exclusively on pressuring Arafat to enforce his ceasefire commitments. “Zinni had limited parameters; I won’t say he had no discretion,” says the European diplomat.

His observation is backed up by two other diplomats familiar with Zinni’s earlier missions. What is unstated is the source of those parameters: presumably, officials in the Bush administration.

Sharon seems to have alarmed the US by saying aloud that the Palestinians must be “hit” or “beaten” until they call for a ceasefire, and then following up those words with continuous, large-scale military operations.

These comments may be driven by concern over the scale of violence now taking place between the Israelis and the Palestinians and how that might affect other US policy goals in the Middle East, such as the move against Iraq.

But it may be that people in Washington, says the US official, “see that the Israeli body politic sees itself on a road to nowhere ... and that makes it easier for them to take a new tone themselves.” —Dawn/The Christian Science Monitor News Service.