JERUSALEM - A month after Yasser Arafat's death, a new political landscape is taking shape in the Middle East.

In the Palestinian territories, 69-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, belying predictions that Arafat's death would unleash a rebellion from the younger ranks of the powerful Fatah movement, appears to be a shoo-in to succeed his longtime boss as president of the Palestinian Authority in elections scheduled for next month.

In Israel, 76-year-old Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sidestepped the need to call elections to form a new government when his Likud party voted to form a coalition with its longtime bitter rival, the Labor Party. If negotiations over ministerial posts succeed, joining Sharon at the cabinet table will be Labor's chief, 81-year-old Shimon Peres.

But amid rosy talk in foreign capitals of fresh political winds, these players represent a familiar old guard on both sides of the conflict, raising doubts that the personnel changes will produce much substantial progress toward Middle East peace.

In recent weeks, signs have emerged to suggest that Israeli-Palestinian relations could be warming.

Abbas declared that the latest armed uprising against Israel was a mistake, and Palestinian television and media have toned down their anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli broadcasts.

Israel said it will attend a British-sponsored international conference on the Middle East in February. And the government pledged to withdraw Israeli troops during the Palestinian election in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Jan. 9 to facilitate the balloting.

So is peace coming to a part of the world synonymous with searing hatred, house demolitions and suicide bombings? Not exactly, say analysts and current and former Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. officials.

"'Peace' is a very over-used term," said Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University. For the time being, he said, the best that can be hoped for between Israelis and Palestinians is "conflict management."

Palestinians are lining up in support of Abbas. Despite their frustration with the gross corruption and political miscalculations of Arafat's cabal, recent public opinion polls indicate that Abbas, the picture-perfect grey-suited man, will win the January vote in a landslide.

Abbas has heeded some of the demands of younger Palestinian leaders, said Dennis Ross, a former U.S. Mideast envoy. But he concedes that Abbas faces an uphill climb, with no prospect in the next year of any progress toward resolving core issues important to the Palestinians: Palestinian refugees, borders and the status of Jerusalem.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are waiting in the wings to benefit from Abbas' failure to provide even modestly improved living conditions for Palestinians - let alone to end Israel's military occupation of their territories. The Islamic militant groups have rejected Abbas' call for an end to armed attacks against Israelis.

The next six months are critical, said Ross, the U.S. point man on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations.

"He still has to show Palestinians he can deliver something (because) the Palestinian public doesn't know him - it wasn't in Arafat's interest for the Palestinian public to know anyone else," Ross said by telephone from Washington. "Abbas will be legitimate because he's elected, but he'll have no authority."

The moderate Abbas was among the first leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s to advocate the recognition of Israel.

Yet he owes his front-runner status less to the popularity of his ideas than to the enduring strength of Arafat's secular Fatah movement, still the strongest political force in the Palestinian territories despite the rise of militant religious factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

One Palestinian official described Abbas and other surviving members of Arafat's clique as relics of the past, unresponsive to the needs of the 3.6 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"They grew up a generation ago. They have no experience of democracy. They have lived mostly in exile and have little first-hand experience of occupation. They are survivalists, not true leaders. How is that different than Arafat?" said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, among Palestinians and left-wing Israelis there is skepticism about Sharon, whom they have reviled for decades.

Will the former army general, who often recalls to visitors his mother's advice "never to trust Arabs," actually follow through on his pledge to allow the creation of a separate and viable Palestinian state?

Can a new Israeli government with the participation of the Labor Party bring a fresh outlook to revive the long-dormant "road map" peace process endorsed by the Bush administration?

Peres is a confirmed peacemaker, sharing the Nobel Prize with Arafat and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the role and influence he will wield in Sharon's government makeover is uncertain.

According to Yoram Peri, a former political adviser to Rabin, the upper crust of Israeli politics is now almost an exclusive province of former generals who tend to think about peace not as real reconciliation "but a series of security arrangements" separate from socioeconomic issues.

Still, longtime Israeli journalist Uri Dan believes Sharon, his friend and political ally of more than a half-century, is in the best position - at least for Israelis - to press ahead the peace process, starting with the planned withdrawal of Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from the interior of the Gaza Strip next year.

"All the struggles, all the wars, all the battles - Sharon's been present at all the crossroads of Israel. He's been on the Via Dolorosa, not crucified on a cross but on the six points of the Star of David. He's a Jewish hero, ready to take on all the suffering and not turn the other cheek. He's better than anyone else for the future of the Jewish state," Dan said.