JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abruptly decided tonight to stay another day in Israel in order to press Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement that had eluded negotiators all day on who should monitor the passage of potential extremists in and out of Gaza.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaking at a news conference today with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
After spending a day talking with Palestinians and Israelis to end a bitter two-month-old impasse on the issue, Ms. Rice attended a memorial service for the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered 10 years ago, and then left for a brief trip to Amman, Jordan, to pay respects to the victims of three hotel bombings last week and meet with Jordan's King, Abdullah II. She planned to return to Jerusalem later tonight.
Speaking at a news conference in Ramallah, in the West Bank, with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, Ms. Rice said earlier in the day that "with enough will and creativity" an agreement on the issue of immigration into Gaza through the Rafah border with Egypt was "within sight."
"I do think they're making a lot of progress," Ms. Rice added. A few hours later, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said that Ms. Rice was determined to reach an agreement and would return to Israel after visiting Jordan instead of leaving tonight for her planned next stop, an economic conference in South Korea.
The inability to get an agreement on the crossing issue, while highly technical and perhaps obscure, was clearly a source of frustration to the American team, which had hoped that Ms. Rice could make an announcement that would pave the way for progress between Israel and the Palestinians in the future. It was highly unusual for the Secretary to thrust herself into the middle of sensitive negotiations in a personal way in order to get a deal.
The crossing dispute is a classic case in Middle East diplomacy of a small matter with large overtones. For Israel the concern is security and for Palestinians it is their control over Gaza now that the pullout of Israeli forces and 9,000 settlers is complete.
James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president who is special envoy in the Middle East, will continue trying to resolve the issue, Ms. Rice said. But officials close to the negotiations said that it was Ms. Rice who presented a compromise proposal that was on the table today.
Expressing some frustration, Mr. Wolfensohn has warned there is an urgent need for a comprehensive agreement on the Gaza crossing points. He has also cited delays imposed by Israel, which are keeping Palestinian trucks from leaving Gaza through a separate crossing to deliver recently harvested produce to markets in Israel and the West Bank, dealing an economic blow to Palestinian farmers and businesses.
After the Gaza withdrawal at the end at the end of the summer, thousands of people flowed in and out of the Rafah crossing, alarming Israeli security people. Now Israel insists on retaining some control over the border by setting up cameras and computers to track people's identity - though Israeli security officials would not be present at the crossing.
The Israeli fear is that terrorists bearing arms or cash to be paid to suicide bombers could come into Gaza from Egypt and sneak into Israel. They are demanding the right to have cameras and computers at the Rafah crossing feeding information into Israeli information banks to check for potential terrorists.
With some reluctance, Israel has also accepted the presence of monitors from the European Union to help man the Rafah crossing but they want more.
"We want to augment Palestinian weakness in a way that does not insult Palestinian independence," said an Israeli official, speaking on anonymity because he was not authorized to use his name.
Palestinians, on the other hand, say that such an intrusive Israeli presence is offensive and unacceptable. Mr. Abbas, at the Ramallah press conference with Ms. Rice declared that Israel "will not be present at the crossing."
Palestinians also feel Israel will be overly restrictive on who it will let into Gaza, stopping anyone with even a minor criminal record in his or her family.
Saeb Erekat, a key Palestinian negotiator, said in an interview after the news conference that the Palestinians were willing to accept the presence of Israeli computers but not cameras.
A compromise proposal, put forward by Ms. Rice, would be to have the European retain effective control over the cameras in order to give the Palestinians the ability to claim that there was no Israeli presence. But as of this afternoon, there was no sign that this proposal would win agreement on both sides.
The Rafah crossing issue is one of several that remain unresolved, but Israeli, Palestinian and American officials are concentrating on it right now to the exclusion of the other issues, including the demand that Israel ease up checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank, pull forces out of main cities there and release Palestinian prisoners.
Ms. Rice arrived in Israel Sunday evening and spent the day first in meetings with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at his office before driving to Ramallah.
She was here in part to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Mr. Rabin and attended the memorial service for him. But by coincidence, this period is also the first anniversary of the death of Yasir Arafat, whose flower-bedecked gravesite she sped by on her way to meet with Mr. Abbas.
American officials are expressing open disappointment, meanwhile, with what they say has been a failure by Mr. Abbas to confront and disarm militant groups, something he has said he would do after the legislative elections in late January of next year. The Americans now say they expect him to take action after the elections.
The Palestinian Authority is facing other serious problems, including with its finances. Salaam Fayyad, the finance minister, said that there is a shortfall of $600 million in the Palestinian budget this year, or about a third of its expenditures, and he did not know where they would make it up.
