A desperate effort by Israel's beleaguered Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, to save his coalition, revive peace efforts with the Palestinians and rebuild his relations with the US appears to be backfiring, typically, because of a miscalculation on Mr Netanyahu's part.
For several hours yesterday, he met ministerial colleagues to try and win their backing for his latest peace proposal, the handover of two chunks of West Bank land to Mr Yasser Arafat's control, in the Hebron area south of Jerusalem, and the Nablus-Jenin area further north.
But so fierce was the opposition of some cabinet members to the plan that Mr Netanyahu could not even persuade them to put it to a vote.
Later in the day Mr Netanyahu attempted to convene all the members of his coalition to discuss this and other issues. But in the most obvious display to date of their disillusion with and disrespect for him, fewer than a quarter of the 66 members bothered to show up, and the meeting was abandoned.
Mr Michael Kleiner, a leading hard-liner, said he and up to 16 other coalition members now "clearly want to topple" Mr Netanyahu, for the crime of proposing any further West Bank concessions to the Palestinians.
Mr Arafat, meanwhile, insisted he had received no formal offer from Mr Netanyahu regarding the next phase of Israeli West Bank land handovers despite reports of a phone conversation late on Tuesday night between the two men.
And Palestinian officials continued to insist privately that the two areas reportedly being offered by the Israeli Prime Minister constitute too miserly a gesture.
The great irony of this wall-to-wall opposition to Mr Netanyahu's offer is that, had he been just a mite more generous, his parlous position could so easily have been reversed. At present, he is proposing to give Mr Arafat control of what amounts to another 6 to 8 per cent of the total West Bank area. The US has been demanding he hand over 10 to 12 per cent.
Since even the hawkish Mr Netanyahu anticipates Mr Arafat eventually controlling well over half of the West Bank, a little more land sooner rather than later would have made little difference, but would have assured the Prime Minister of the immediate backing of the Clinton Administration.
It would most likely have yielded grudging acceptance, under US pressure, from Mr Arafat, who is of course much happier digging in his heels for now, in the hope that Mr Netanyahu's government will fall. Crucially, too, Mr Netanyahu would have garnered the support, albeit on this single issue, of the moderate opposition Labour Party, ensuring overall parliamentary approval.
Certainly his ministerial opponents would have criticised him even more loudly. But their knives are out for him anyway. A touch more generosity, and he could reasonably have tried to portray himself as a tough but fair negotiator, committed in principle to making a success of the peace process. And that would have done wonders for public opinion, and consequently for his own standing in parliament.
Mr Netanyahu is to try again on Sunday to win ministerial backing for his proposal; an arduous, and almost certainly pointless battle, given Mr Arafat's disinclination to accept it, and the American assessment that Mr Arafat has every right to dig in his heels.