FAST-PACED diplomacy is gripping the Middle East, with peace brokers and truce makers crossing paths as the region's zones of crisis begin to interact. Even as a critical high-level meeting of Palestinian hardline factions opened in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, moderate Arab leaders were in Damascus and Washington, and the heads of world powers closely involved in the Middle Eastern jigsaw gathered in Jerusalem for the opening of a new Holocaust museum. These contacts reflect the growing sense in the Arab realm that a hinge time has arrived, when breakthroughs to a new era of democracy lie close at hand...