  A leading twist expansion in terms of bilocal operators is proposed for the
structure functions of deeply inelastic scattering near the elastic limit $x
\to 1$, which is also applicable to a range of other hard quasi-elastic
processes. Operators of increasing dimensions contribute to logarithmically
enhanced terms, which are suppressed by corresponding powers of $1-x$. For the
longitudinal structure function in moment $(N)$ space all the logarithmic
contributions of order $\ln^k N/N$ are shown to be resummable in terms of the
anomalous dimension of the leading operator in the expansion.
