FROM throughout the West Bank, but especially from nearby Kiryat Arba and from Hebron itself, hundreds of Jewish settlers converged last night on the Cave of the Patriarchs, to rend their clothing in a sign of mourning and sing their lamentations to the Lord for the loss of Hebron.
They prayed on ground that the Old Testament says Abraham purchased from Efron the Hittite for 400 silver shekels, the purported burial place not only of Abraham, but of his wife Sarah, and of their descendants Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah, in the city where King David briefly made his capital.
Dov Lior, one of the most prominent rabbis in the area, led the service, bemoaning that Hebron had been "given over to the terrorists" - Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority officials. Just over a year ago, Rabbi Lior was one of several rabbis questioned by Israeli police over the assassination of the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and released without charge. He is one of the rabbis to have signed religious edicts ordering soldiers not to participate in the evacuation of West Bank settlements.
And yet last night, his mourning ceremony for Hebron effectively represented his acknowledgement that his battle has been lost the right wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has defied the settlers, adopted the land for peace approach, and pulled the army out of most of what Rabbi Lior and other Orthodox Jews call "the city of our fathers".
The settlers and their supporters will, of course, continue their struggle. Hebron, after all, has not been relinquished in total.
And the overwhelming Knesset vote for the Hebron pull out should not erase the memory of the bitter cabinet debate that preceded it, when seven of Mr Netanyahu's 18 ministers voted against the accord, and at least three others only toed the Netanyahu line under extraordinary prime ministerial pressure.
The minister who quit after the cabinet vote, Benny Begin, son of the 1970s Likud prime minister has vowed to fight on.
But the Hebron deal has shifted the balance of power. Mr Netanyahu is edging towards the centre, and the hardline settlers - as their mourning ceremony last night underlined - are being left behind.