So farewell then, President Clinton. You came to the Middle East, helicoptered into Gaza for a single day, and headed home to battle against impeachment.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, is calling Monday's events in Gaza, when you addressed the hundreds of Palestinian leaders who had just publicly renounced their written pledge to strive for the destruction of Israel, a significant step forward.

But you know that Monday's gathering in Gaza's a-Shawwa conference hall was far, far more than a step. It was a revolution, a moment of national destiny. Monday was the day when you committed the United States to steering the Palestinians safely to independent statehood. It was the day when the United States made its peace with Yasser Arafat, and when Israel lost its claim to automatic first place in its affections.

For a full 30 months, since Mr Netanyahu squeezed into office, the Israeli left wing, the moderates, the peace camp, have been urging you to turn up the heat on him, to pressure him into embracing the partnership with the Palestinians, to halt settlement expansion, to recognise that Israel only benefits from a more stable Palestinian entity next door, to trade occupied land willingly on the path to permanent peace.

But you chose not to do that. Instead, in Gaza on Monday, you essentially told the Israeli public that their leader wasn't acting in their interests, and that they'd do well to choose themselves another. A prime minister who was genuinely seeking to build towards an accommodation with the Palestinians, and who honestly had doubts about whether the PLO Covenant had been properly revoked in the past, would have insisted on being present. Such a prime minister would have been sitting by your side on stage, to add his own applause to yours when those hundreds of delegates raised their hands and stood to demonstrate their commitment to peacemaking. But Mr Netanyahu was not there and, given his record, would not have been welcome. Mr Netanyahu does not see himself as Mr Arafat's partner on any path to greater Palestinian independence. Mr Netanyahu, as he told you himself on Sunday, has yet to be convinced that the Palestinian leadership is seeking coexistence with Israel. He's still demanding "a new code of conduct" from Mr Arafat and his colleagues.

And so, in one of the most telling passages of your speech, when you praised the annulment of the Covenant, you delivered an exquisite snub to Mr Netanyahu. You told your rapt Palestinian audience that they had "done a good thing. You know why? It has nothing to do with the government of Israel. You have touched the people of Israel".

The people of Israel are nobody's pushover. Much as they like you, and recognise your concern for their country (in contrast to your complete lack of concern for Mr Netanyahu and his government), the sight of you embracing Mr Arafat will not sweep away their many reservations about him.

But they do, almost all of them, genuinely want to live in peace. The vast majority of them recognise the inevitability of a Palestinian state and are only concerned that it not come to constitute a military threat to theirs. And your hope, now, must be that ever more of them are seeing Mr Netanyahu for what he is, a political manipulator desperately trying to hang on in office, sucking the good will out of Israeli-Palestinian relations because to move forward is to lose the support of the ideological hardliners who brought him to power.

The penny has now finally dropped, it seems, among the bickering rabble at the helm of Israel's opposition Labour Party. Having initially promised Mr Netanyahu a "safety net" - guaranteed support in the Knesset if he moves ahead with peace-making - the Labour leader, Mr Ehud Barak, is now suggesting that Mr Netanyahu and he sit down together and set a date for new elections. Next Monday the Prime Minister faces a no-confidence motion which, without that Labour support, he will struggle to survive.

It would, I think, tickle you no end to watch the ripples from your brief visit spread out to rock and ultimately sink the Netanyahu coalition, the Prime Minister exposed once and for all as a man ruthlessly prepared to put his own political survival ahead of the good of his country, to capitulate to the loudmouths urging an end to land-for-peace just to sustain himself in office for another few weeks or months.

By the end of this week, Mr President, your own future might be looking shaky. By next Monday, so might Mr Netanyahu's. Only Mr Arafat, the frail, trembling Mr Arafat, ironically, can contemplate the road ahead with any serenity.

Because whatever happens to you, or to Mr Netanyahu, Monday in Gaza marked the beginning of the realisation of Mr Arafat's independent Palestine. In partnership with, or in spite of, Israel. With the public support of the United States. As you told him, Mr Arafat has done "a remarkable job for his people". And now the time has come for the Palestinians to exercise their "legitimate rights," to "shape a new Palestinian future on your own land".

A moment of national destiny, indeed. And how sad and self-defeating that Israel, under this government, was not there to share in it.

David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report