Israel's moderate Labour Party last night voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining a "unity government" with the hard-line Prime Minister-elect, Mr Ariel Sharon.
But the move was opposed by several of the party's leading ideologues, and the stormy meeting that preceded the vote - during which senior politicians and their respective supporters castigated one another - suggested that Labour, which has governed Israel for most of the modern state's 53 years and is still the largest party in parliament, is falling apart.
Labour's guiding Central Committee will convene again on Thursday to choose the eight ministers who will serve in Mr Sharon's government - or to "rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic", as anti-unity advocate and would-be party leader, Mr Avraham Burg, termed it yesterday.
But it seems certain that Mr Shimon Peres, who has filled the party leadership vacuum left by the defeated caretaker Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, will be appointed either defence minister or foreign minister.
Praising party members for approving the unity move by about two to one, Mr Peres, who had argued that Labour can moderate Mr Sharon's hawkish tendencies with respect to the Palestinians, said they had acted in the party's, and the country's, best interests.
It was Mr Peres who, at 77, had delivered the most passionate address in favour of the partnership with Mr Sharon.
While his bitterest adversary in the party, the outgoing Foreign Minister, Mr Shlomo BenAmi, asserted that Labour would be "hastening its own clinical death" if it joined Mr Sharon, and said it would serve as the "fig leaf" for an extremist government, Mr Peres countered that Labour had been "ignoring the will of the people".
Hence, Mr Peres said, Mr Barak's utter humiliation in the prime ministerial elections three weeks ago, when Mr Sharon defeated him by 25 per cent.
Mr Sharon, continued Mr Peres, was offering to build "a genuine working relationship" with Labour and had agreed to a government platform that would honour signed agreements with the Palestinians. In essence, therefore, he said, "the Likud is signing on to [the] Oslo [peace process] . . . And it has committed itself to building no new settlements" in the occupied territories.
How, he asked, could Labour be so irresponsible as to reject a partnership on such a basis, when so large a majority of Israelis so clearly supported it?
Still, given the bitterness exposed at yesterday's meeting - during which party members accused each other of political treachery, incompetence and arrogance, and their supporters scuffled - it is far from clear that all of Labour's leaders will join the government or even remain in the party.
Although it was hardly mentioned yesterday, the source of Labour's ideological crisis is Mr Barak's unsuccessful attempt to reach a permanent peace accord with the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, with the party divided between those who believe that an accord was almost within reach and could yet be attained, and those who have concluded that Mr Arafat is not a viable peace partner.
Mr Ben-Ami and the outgoing Justice Minister, Mr Yossi Beilin, the party's two most steadfast defenders of the collapsed partnership with Mr Arafat, may well split off to a new grouping, taking some of Labour's other Knesset members with them.
With Labour, however fractious, now on board, Mr Sharon can hope to be sworn into office within a few days. Yesterday he set out his terms for easing economic and other sanctions against the Palestinians, demanding a public call from Mr Arafat to his people to halt Intifada violence, efforts by the PA to stop "incitement" against Israel and the renewal of security co-operation between the two sides.