AS SOON as Israel's long delayed troop withdrawal from most of Hebron is complete, the Israeli Prime Minister wants to ditch the rest of the Oslo peace accords and sit down instead with the Palestinians to negotiate a final settlement of all remaining disputes.
Mr Benjamin Netanyahu dropped this diplomatic bombshell yesterday in a speech at the opening of the Knesset's winter session. He said he felt there was broad national consensus on the nature of a final settlement.
It provoked an immediate rejection from a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, who said the authority "insists on the implementation of every clause of the Oslo accords".
It also brought immediate condemnation from Mr Uri Savir, one of the Israeli diplomats who drafted the agreements, who said the move would spell the end of peace efforts.
Mr Netanyahu's desire to proceed as soon as possible to talks on permanent arrangements for Israeli Palestinian coexistence reflects his abiding distaste for the Oslo framework and the schedule of phased land hand overs for which it provides.
He is well aware that the international community will not allow him to duck out of the commitment to pull out of Hebron, but the Oslo accords also provide for three further Israeli redeployments over the coming year - by the last of which Mr Yasser Arafat would control most West Bank territory.
Mr Netanyahu strongly wishes to avoid those redeployments which he believes would seriously weaken Israel's bargaining position on a permanent settlement.
The architects of the Oslo process deliberately constructed a mechanism for `gradual transfer' of control of occupied land, but left the most complex issues - the fate of Jerusalem, the future of Jewish settlements, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the final nature of the Palestinian entity in Gaza and the West Bank, precise border delineations, and so on - for final settlement talks.
A May 1999 deadline was set for the final accord.
Since Mr Netanyahu took office in June, however, any mutual goodwill has dissipated. Now, as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators argue over the precise details of the Hebron redeployment, the prime minister wants to break free of the Oslo mechanism and effectively cut to the chase - the permanent solution.
The opposition leader, Mr Shimon Peres, Oslo's guiding ideologue. ridiculed the notion in his Knesset address yesterday, asserting that a premature rush to the final status talks, in the current strained atmosphere, could only prove disastrous.
Recalling the Jerusalem tunnel project that provoked last month's gun battles that left more than 70 people killed, Mr Peres asked the prime minister, with withering sarcasm: "Do you really think this is the time to start negotiating the future of Jerusalem?"