Israel's new Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, today hopes to bring a satisfactory first visit to Washington to a highly successful close by agreeing with President Clinton on the final details for a renewal of peace talks with Syria.
Mr Barak has mainly used the six-day trip to establish a warm working relationship with Mr Clinton, but he has also been at pains to continue the exchange of positive signals with Damascus.
In a television interview on Saturday, for example, the Prime Minister made a broad hint at his willingness to trade land on the Golan Heights for a peace treaty.
In return for such talk of concessions, the word from Mr Barak's aides is that Syria, which had been demanding that peace talks resume "from the point at which they left off" in 1996 - a point on which, unfortunately, the negotiating parties are unable to agree - is now ready to sanction a resumption "in the light of previous negotiations".
By such delicately amended formulations are the obstacle-strewn paths to peace made smooth.
In his series of meetings with Mr Clinton over the last few days, Mr Barak has committed himself to a 15-month peacemaking timetable. By the end of that period, he has pledged to the President, Israel will either have made the breakthrough towards an accord with Syria and a permanent treaty with the Palestinians or it will have exhausted itself in trying.
By no coincidence at all, 15 months pretty much represents the time left for President Clinton to chalk up a personal role in Middle East peacemaking, before the approach of the November 2000 presidential elections forces him to wind down his involvement in activities that might bind his successor.
If 15 months sounds a highly ambitious deadline for resolving the mass of Israeli-Palestinian disputes - over the status of Jerusalem, refugees, water allocation, Jewish settlements and more - it is, nevertheless, more than enough time to rebuild a working relationship, and to decide on the modalities for eventually solving problems too complex to solve right away.
On some of these issues, such as the question of Palestinian statehood, Mr Barak is as mild in office as he was on the campaign trail, stating simply, that, "when the time comes, the Palestinians will have to negotiate with us what kind of entity".
But on others, he sounds no different to his hardline predecessor, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, insisting that the Palestinians can have no sovereign rights in Jerusalem and that Palestinian refugees will not be allowed back to sovereign Israel. On the Syrian front, a 15-month peacemaking period looks more viable almost by the day. King Abdullah of Jordan has been assuring various visitors in recent days that President Assad is now talking about "when" rather than "whether" he will make peace with Israel.
In a similar vein, Lebanon's ambassador to the US, Mr Farid Aboud, reportedly told a closed forum last week that Mr Barak was clearly heading a "completely different" government from its foot-dragging predecessor and stressed, most pleasingly for Israeli ears, that "peace and security must be enjoyed by the residents of both south Lebanon and northern Israel".
Meanwhile, Israel's Supreme Court yesterday approved the release of the country's longest-held administrative detainee, Mr Osama Barham, who had spent six years in jail without trial. Arrested in 1993 for alleged membership of the militant Muslim group Islamic Jihad, Mr Barham (35) said in court yesterday, that "I don't know what they have against me and neither does my lawyer".
In an agreement that paved the way to his release, Mr Barham vowed neither to participate in, nor to support, violence against Israel.
Israel's new Justice Minister, Mr Yossi Beilin, said he considered the use of administrative detention to be "a stain" on Israel's democracy, and that he would hope to be able to cancel it.