ose a freeze on settlement expansion in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, one of the most contentious issues in the conflict with Palestinians. "The only pressure comes from Jews on themselves," he said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post published Friday.

But behind the bravado, Israeli officials concede there is growing apprehension over widening differences between Sharon and the Bush administration on the settlements issue, and other elements of Bush's three-stage "road map." It's the Americans' first serious effort to get Middle East peace negotiations going again in more than a year. Bush insists on a total settlement freeze and has also rejected an Israeli demand that the Palestinians renounce their right of return as a precondition for an Israeli declaration, required in the road map, on the Palestinian right to an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza. Abandoning the right of return is anathema to the Palestinians. In The Jerusalem Post interview, Sharon staked out what appeared to be a new, tougher position on settlements, particularly in the West Bank, even those considered sacrosanct to the vision of Greater Israel such as Shiloh and Beit El.

"If you ask me whether in Beit El there will not be Jews," he said, "No ú Jews will live there . Do you see a possibility of Jews living under Arab sovereignty? I'm asking you, do you see that possibility?"

This was a very different Sharon to the man who told Haaretz last month: "We're talking about the cradle of the Jewish people. Our whole history is bound up with these places." Israeli officials say that there is contradiction between these two statements and that Sharon was simply spelling out that it would be impossible to draw a neat line, with Arabs on one side and Israelis on the other, that under any peace deal there would be provisions for Jews living in Palestine just as there are Palestinians living in Israel. Such simplistic musings apart, and whatever the hawkish Sharon's intentions ú and the Palestinians look up those as totally to their detriment ú his comments to the Post suggest that Israel has no intention of negotiating. And worse, his position could well convince Mahmoud Abbas ú whose emergence from the relative obscurity of having lived in Yasser Arafat's shadow is another example of US-imposed "regime change" ú to drag his feet on the issue of stamping out violence, and ending the 31-month-old intifada.

If that happens, we can forget about the road map and the prospect, unbelievably remote though it might be, of an end to the bloodletting. So it is likely that when Sharon sits down with Bush in the White House the settlements issue will be the main item on the agenda. It is understood that Sharon might seek to minimize the friction by agreeing to remove some of the so-called "illegal outposts" established in the West Bank over the last two years. But coming from the Israeli leader who has publicly exhorted Israelis to "seize the hilltops" to stake their claims, this may not be greeted with any enthusiasm or credulity. But how far Bush can pressure Sharon is questionable as the US president embarks on the campaign trail for the 2004 elections. He is unlikely to be able to risk alienating the Jewish vote, or for that matter, that of the Christian evangelicals who now are aligned with Israel.

The upbeat assessment of Israeli officials in recent days on Sharon's Washington is starkly at odds with the dismal failure of Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent visit to the region to generate some momentum on the road map, supposedly drawn up with the aid of the UN, the EU and Russia but to their chagrin indelibly stamped with Bush's imprimatur.

Powell, whose ventures into the Arab-Israeli minefield have been diplomatic disasters, failed to convince Sharon to accept the road map as presented by the Bush administration. What Powell's visit did achieve was to once again underline that Sharon is determined to control the West Bank with as few Palestinians living there as he can manage.

It was not a coincidence that his tourism minister, Benny Elon, a hard-line rabbi, was in Washington in advance of Sharon's visit presenting a plan of his own ú the ethnic cleansing ("transfer" in the anodyne jargon of the Israeli right) of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories to neighboring Arab states, primarily Jordan. Elon's party and his views are more extreme even than Sharon's Likud. Sharon himself has frequently declared that "there is a Palestinian state and its name is Jordan."

Whether or not Sharon sanctioned Elon's lobbying efforts, not only with Congress but notably with the Christian right as well, the fact is that Elon found a sympathetic ear. "It's not my task to raise their objection to the road map, because they already have it," he told reporters. "I hope we can find together a more creative and more peaceful alternative." The view of the pro-Israel lobby surrounding the Bush administration was summarized by Daniel Pipes, a dedicated opponent of the Arabs and the Palestinians in particular whose nomination by Bush as one of the directors of the US Institute for Peace stirred outrage. He told The New York Post recently: "Diplomacy rarely ends conflicts. Hardly a single major interstate conflict has been concluded due to someone's clever schema. The idea that a 'peace process' can take the place of the dirty work of war is a conceit."

Leonard Fein, a prominent Jewish author and commentator in the US, asked recently in Forward, a leading American Jewish weekly: "Is Bush playing both ends against the middle? Or is the president being duplicitous, endorsing the peace plan to placate Tony Blair and, in leaser measure, the State Department, fully expecting the road map will fail ú and prepared, if by some chance it does not, to find a way to scuttle it?"

Pipes, for his part as a leading member of the neo conservatives who seem to hold the administration in thrall, opted for the duplicity. "The road map is for show, not true policy," he told the New York Post, "and US endorsement of a Palestinian state remains remote." Prior to Powell's Middle East visit, there were reports that the Bush administration and Sharon's government had agreed not to discuss a freeze on Jewish settlements until there had been a prolonged period of calm and only after the Palestinians had fulfilled most of obligations in the first phase of the three-stage road map presented by the US administration.

According to Israeli and US diplomatic sources, their governments want to witness unequivocal efforts by Mahmoud's new Palestinian government and his security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, until a year ago the head of Arafat's Preventive Security Service in Gaza, to crush the militants who are keeping the intifada alive.

Whether that is the case remains to be seen. But it certainly fits into Sharon's strategy of using delaying tactics, as he has repeatedly done to sabotage earlier initiatives to end the conflict. The settlements are a constant provocation to the Palestinians, who see the creeping colonization of their territory as a large-scale land grab and part of an Israeli effort to eventually push out most of the 1.8 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

The road map, as presented by the Americans, specifies that a settlements freeze should include a halt to the "natural growth of settlements," that catch-all phrase used by the Israelis to mask steady settlement expansion that has been going on for years and been stepped up under Sharon. But the road map is vague on the timing of such a freeze in the first phase of the plan. Israel has taken that to mean that the Bush administration concurs that they don't have to bother with a construction freeze now.

"There is really no point in discussing a settlement freeze in any detail at the moment because it's still premature," according to a senior Israeli diplomat. "Freezing settlements is something that will come at a much later stage and the Americans accept that." That's not what the other members of "the Quartet" who helped shape the road map say they were led to expect and they are distinctly unhappy with the US-Israeli interpretation. Halting settlement activity is political dynamite in Israel, particularly among the right-wing and the settlers' organization, and Sharon clearly does not want to alienate his constituency. Indeed, the issue is so sensitive that according to Aaron Miller, a former State Department official who helped formulate the road map, Israeli and US officials have never held detailed discussions on the mechanics of a settlement freeze. "This issue simply involved so many sensitivities and so many Israeli government ministries ú it is simply too difficult to follow and too difficult to define," he says.

Even the US government does not have a clear definition of what a settlement freeze would entail, he says. "Does a freeze apply to the West Bank and the Golan Heights only? If someone wants to build a roof or an addition to a house, is he permitted to do this?" For his part, Abbas will need all the help he can get if he is to carry the day and Sharon's recalcitrance over the road map is no help at all. Arafat, who is now fighting for his political survival against his old pal Abbas, is not going to do anything to help him. Abbas is no in-fighter like Arafat and may not have the stomach for the bruising battles that may be looming. If Sharon gets what he wants in Washington, the outlook is indeed bleak.

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