So now, finally, crunch time has arrived for Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US has set out its proposals for resuscitating the peace process. Mr Yasser Arafat has accepted them. Now the pressure is on Mr Netanyahu.
If he rejects the American demand for a rapid Israeli withdrawal from another 13 per cent of occupied West Bank land, he will destroy the last hopes of reconciliation with the Palestinians, setting the stage for a new cycle of regional bloodshed, and placing his administration in direct conflict with the most pro-Israeli US leadership, from the president down, in the 50-year history of the Jewish state.
If he accepts the American proposals, however, he will be able to claim he is giving up far less land than his Labour Party predecessors would have relinquished at this stage, he will win the overwhelming backing of his people, he will ease the strains in his ties with the US, and restore much of the goodwill to Israel's fracturing relations with such moderate Arab nations as Jordan and Egypt.
Furthermore, to judge by the parting comments in London yesterday of the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, he will be able to claim a victory for his tough negotiating strategy. If the two sides can reach agreement on this next phase of the peace effort over the coming days, the secretary said: "President Clinton is prepared to invite the parties to Washington to launch accelerated permanent status negotiations." Accelerated talks, that is, on a final peace accord with the Palestinians - precisely the approach Mr Netanyahu has been advocating, skipping over the other interim stages of the Oslo peace accords, and moving instead directly on to the last and most contentious issues of dispute, such as the future of Jerusalem, the limitations on Palestinian statehood, the fate of Jewish settlements, the rights of return for Palestinian refugees, and so on.
It seems, on the face of it, an extremely straightforward choice - the more so given the blunt assessment, delivered by the Israeli Army Chief-of-Staff, Amnon Shahak, to a Knesset committee yesterday, that the final collapse of the peace effort would almost inevitably trigger widespread Palestinian violence, whether Mr Arafat encourages it or tries to suppress it.
And yet, Mr Netanyahu, being the conflicted figure that he is - able to order Israeli troops out of Hebron one month, and start building a hugely controversial Jewish housing project on disputed land the next - is by no means certain to signal his acceptance of the US proposals. Two factors must be holding him back:
The first is the question of how his coalition, which currently enjoys a Knesset majority of precisely one vote, might react. Time and again, in deflecting US pressure for compromise in recent months, Mr Netanyahu has wailed that his government allies would never sanction the kind of concessions being demanded of him. About a dozen members of his coalition have insisted that they will bolt his government, spelling his downfall, if he relinquishes even the 9 per cent of the West Bank he has said he is ready to hand over.
But then, a few months ago, those same hardline cabinet members had warned they would bring him down if he gave up so much as an inch, never mind 9 per cent. Mr Netanyahu could well afford to call their bluff - to reason with these hardliners that, if they force his government out of office, they will be inviting the moderate Labour opposition back into power, and risking far more generous land-for-peace deals with both the Palestinians and, on the Golan Heights, with the Syrians. It is a powerful argument and one that Mr Netanyahu can fairly expect to win.
The second factor mitigating against a prompt Netanyahu "yes" to the US is much harder to assess, for it concerns his own personal mindset. He grew up in a fiercely ideological household that championed the Jewish right to the West Bank and the planting of as many Jewish homes there as possible. As prime minister, he has introduced a range of financial incentives to boost settlement growth.
Now, he has to choose between continued adherence to that policy, or a troop withdrawal that could isolate some settlements and pave the way for their ultimate evacuation. For Mr Netanyahu, who wants to be remembered both as the ideologue who doubled the settler population of the West Bank and as the statesman who achieved a viable permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians, this is the moment of truth. A generation of Israelis and Palestinians awaits his decision.