Updated at 21:50 from an earlier version

The tenth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin continues to influence events; there was the annual rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, this time highlighted by a speech by Bill Clinton; there was the annual scandal over how to commemorate Rabin's assassination - this year it is Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin who sparked the argument with a proposed speech that decries the way the anniversary is turned into a 'crusade' for the Rabin 'legacy' of peacemaking with the Palestinians. And it was a good excuse for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority, claiming that an Israeli-Palestinian peace remains a top priority for Washington.

It all sounded so familiar, as she emphasized the two-state solution, calling a Palestinian state good for Israeli security, but in most of her work in her meetings with the Israelis and Palestinians focused on the operation of the border passages - actually, their non-operation. Israel, the Palestinians and the Egyptians have not reached an agreement that will open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, mostly because the Israelis insist on live broadcasts from the crossing, so they can remotely supervise all that takes place there. Meanwhile, perhaps even more critically, Israel appears to be using security concerns to economically strangle the Gaza Strip, slowing down the anyway slow truck to truck transfer of goods going in and out of Gaza, while still clamping down to prevent any connection between the West Bank and Gaza.

James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, was threatening to quit (and no doubt go public with the reasons) if the Israelis and Palestinians did not make the final compromise on an agreement that suposedly will free Palestinian transportation from total Israeli control. Convoys of buses -- with military escorts, no doubt -- are expected by the middle of next month, Rice's people seemed to be saying as she reortedly announced plans to postpone her Asian trip and stay here, to make sure the agreement on opening Rafah and moving Gazans and West Bankers back and forth between their territories is made possible.

But while Rice is trying diplomacy as representative of what here at least is not regarded as a lame duck administration, the IDF continues to set policy - it killed a leading Hamas man in the West Bank city of Nablus, a killing that now threatens Hamas obedience of the tahadiye, the shaky ceasefire set down by the Palestinians almost a year ago, and which the Hamas has more or less maintained while Islamic Jihad and some rogue cells of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have tried to ignore. But as far as the army is concerned, the Hamas continues to prepare for terror attacks against Israel by collecting intelligence, building arms supplies, and trying to smuggle Qassam-making know-how into the West Bank. They may be conscious of public opinion, but it's all tactical, says the army, which anyway has 'long accounts' to settle with wanted men, such as one killed today near Nablus.

The Palestinian Authority worries that every Israeli attack on the Hamas only strengthens the Islamic organization, which knows very well that the vast majority of Palestinians oppose the violence. If Hamas wants to win votes in the upcoming Palestinian Legislative Council elections, it cannot be seen sparking the kind of violence that sends Israeli troops into massive action.

Meanwhile, one mortar fired yesterday at a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip yesterday prompted an Israeli artillery barrage of 60 shells into that part of Gaza where the mortar was fired. No casualties were reported by the Palestinians. According to Israel Radio, the IDF was sending a message to the Palestinian Authority, saying the artillery responses yesterday and overnight represent stepped up Israeli reactions to any Palestinian shooting into Israel.

Indeed, that's Rice's main challenge while here - in the absence of any direct communications between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and with Sharon adamantly refusing to talk with Abbas, Rice is being forced to deal with relatively petty issues like the Rafah crossing problem, and can only deal philosophically with issues like Hamas participation in the upcoming PLC elections.

The U.S. is trying to promote democracy in the region so it cannot be seen denying certain political parties the right to participate. But Rice rightly points out that no government can tolerate privately run armed militias affiliated with political parties, using terror as a method to press for their cause.

Israel can point to its own history to prove that uch a shodwon with radicals is part of nation building, something that it is impatient to see much faster in the PA, as Abbas keeps promising will happen after the January elections there.

So, meanwhile, at the Karny junction between Gaza and Israel, the main entrance and exit for all of Gaza's fuel, food, medicines, raw materials and commerce with Israel, the West Bank and indeed the entire world, Israeli troops killed an armed Palestinian, one of three trying to infiltrate the zone at the border carrying mines to plant inside the very zone used to transport Palestinian goods and goods meant for Palestine.

Meanwhile, Sharon and the newly elected Labor Party chairman Amr Peretz are wrestling over when they will meet, and apparently about how the two will work out a date for new elections. As of this morning, Peretz wants elections as soon as possible - March or even the end of February - while Sharon, who thought he could keep his government alive until November 2006, now realizes that his government will fall apart very soon but has his own tactical reasons for postponing elections as long as possible to organize to defeat the rebels and their leader, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Peretz is being forced into nearly daily maneuvers to prove his leadership to the Labor Party leaders who did not support his candidacy, and ironically, Peretz's threat to the Likud as an authentic representative of the grassroots poor and working poor seems to be working to heal the divisions in the Likud. At least that's what the press has been saying today - there's even talk of a deal being worked out between Sharon and Netanyahu. But politics are so volatile here that nothing can be predicted right now -- incluindgthe outome of the elections whenever they are held. Not a single poll predicted Peretz would beat Shimon Peres. They are about trustrworthy right now as any Likud or Labor backbencher suddenly realizing that the political map will be changing -- and nobody can predict yet how.

Yitzhak Rabin's Last Speech, which he delivered at the Tel Aviv peace rally on Nov. 4 1995

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