Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, faces a critical choice this weekend between sanctioning continued peace talks between his Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, and leaders of President Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, or halting the talks and maintaining his efforts to accelerate the demise of Mr Arafat's regime.
Yesterday was marked by yet more violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Israeli troops killed an apparent Palestinian suicide bomber in Gaza, and a Palestinian man led Israeli police to the body of an Israeli settler he had allegedly murdered last week. But overall, the number of daily incidents of shooting and bombing has declined dramatically in recent days, creating a positive context for the ongoing contacts between Mr Peres and a Palestinian negotiating team led by Mr Ahmed Qurei, also known as Abu Ala, the Speaker of the Palestinian Parliament.
Mr Peres and Mr Qurei are both adamant that their dialogue represents the best hope of reviving the peace efforts that collapsed after the failure of the summer 2000 Camp David summit.
Working on a plan under which the Palestinians would declare independent statehood in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, with key issues of dispute then to be resolved on a state-to-state basis, both sides have been reporting significant progress in recent days, and more sessions are expected next week - unless Mr Sharon intervenes to block them. The Americans, the EU and various other would-be peacebrokers are quietly encouraging the talks.
But although Mr Sharon has himself publicly indicated his support for Palestinian statehood, his attitude to the Peres-Qurei dialogue is ambivalent. At the start of the week, when details of the secretive negotiations broke, the Prime Minister said they were damaging to Israeli interests and undermined his pledge not to "negotiate under fire".
The next day, he contradicted himself, declaring that Mr Peres was co-ordinating all diplomatic efforts with him, and that they had his support.
On Thursday, he changed tack again, stating that he was "completely opposed" to the idea of Mr Peres discussing Palestinian statehood, and that there would be no more such discussions until the cabinet had taken a formal position on the matter.
Mr Sharon may not wish to be perceived internationally as the obstacle to a negotiated resolution of this conflict, but right-wingers in his coalition will bring down his government if they perceive him to be overly conciliatory. Gen Shaul Mofaz, the army's chief of staff, made clear his attitude yesterday, when characterising the Palestinian Authority as "infected with terrorism from head to toe". And Mr Sharon has been following a clear policy of seeking to delegitimise Mr Arafat's regime rather than to reach a new accord with it.
Indeed, it was because of a desire to weaken Mr Arafat's authority among his own people that Mr Sharon resisted domestic and international pressure and barred the Palestinian leader from Bethlehem at Christmas.