This is despite accusations from Israeli ministers, among them Shimon Peres, the foreign minister, that the Palestinian Authority was to blame because it had done little to curb terrorism.
When Shimon Peres stepped down as Israel's president last July, Mugabe assumed the mantle of the world's oldest head of state.
A year ago, after four suicide bombs, world leaders gathered in Egypt to condemn terrorism and rally around the beleaguered Israeli prime minister, Shimon Peres.
But Shimon Peres, still Labour's leader, sees things differently".What would we achieve?", he asked at a tense meeting of his parliamentary party on March 24th.
Despite loud mutterings from his own Likud Party, Mr Sharon announced that the ministerial group to negotiate with Mr Zinni would comprise himself and his two top Labour lieutenants, Shimon Peres, the foreign minister, and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the defence minister.As to Mr Arafat's release, Mr Sharon is trumpeting this, too, as "a great success for the government".
Mr Sharon vetoed a move by Shimon Peres, the foreign minister, to resume contacts with the Palestinian Authority now.
So far, however, he still seems determined to go ahead, despite the misgivings of most members of his ruling Likud party and of several leading cabinet colleagues.Last month they had scuppered his scheme to bring the opposition Labour Party, headed by Shimon Peres, into a coalition government already weakened by defections in protest against the withdrawal idea.
"The Iranians are experts at taking advantage of chaos," says Shimon Shapira, a retired military man now at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, a think-tank.The rise of IS, a Sunni jihadist movement straddling Iraq and Syria, has only strengthened Iran.
Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister, this week denied reports that a deal to swap Corporal Shalit for several hundred Palestinian prisoners was in the making, but said that if and when he was freed, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, would meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, soon after.
Two days earlier he unexpectedly beat Israel's elder statesman and Rabin's erstwhile lieutenant, Shimon Peres, in Labour primaries.
