In a major turnabout, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has relegated his main policy goal - a unilateral withdrawal from much of the West Bank - to the back-burner, in the wake of Israel's month-long offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Just two weeks ago, Mr Olmert said in an interview that the achievements of the military operation in Lebanon would promote the implementation of his withdrawal plan. But, in recent days, he has been telling ministers that he recognises he must now reorder the government's priorities.
While the conflict with the Palestinians cannot be ignored, he has said the government's focus will now be on rebuilding northern Israel. Transportation minister Meir Sheetrit, who is a member of Mr Olmert's Kadima party, said yesterday that the plan for a unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank would not be carried out in the "foreseeable future". But he did not think Mr Olmert had given up on the idea altogether.
Mr Olmert's plan calls for a withdrawal from some 90 per cent of the West Bank, with Israel relinquishing many of the more isolated settlements, while retaining several major settlement blocs, close to the 1967 border. The security barrier Israel is building in the West Bank is meant to serve as the border between the two peoples until a final line is agreed on in negotiations.
When Mr Olmert first responded to Hizbullah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers on July 12th with a fierce aerial bombardment in Lebanon, there were some suggestions he was trying to send a message not only to the Shia organisation - that Israel wouldn't tolerate a violation of its border - but also to the Palestinians. The message was that Israel was prepared to make territorial concessions, but that if it withdrew in the West Bank and the Palestinians continued attacks - as in the case of Gaza - they would pay a heavy price.
But with Israel unable to stop the rocket fire from Lebanon - and Gaza - that deterrent threat has become increasingly hollow, and the Israeli public, along with its political leaders, increasingly sceptical about the merits of unilateralism.
Six years ago Israelis backed then prime minister Ehud Barak when he unilaterally pulled the army out of south Lebanon after a bloody 18-year occupation of a security zone. A year ago they applauded then prime minister Ariel Sharon when he unilaterally dismantled all the settlements in Gaza.
But in both cases, the withdrawals failed to stem attacks on Israel. Hizbullah continued to attack Israeli troops along Israel's northern border, insisting that Israel still occupied a small strip of Lebanese territory - the Shebaa Farms - that the UN had determined belonged to Syria. In the year following the Gaza pull-out, Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets from the strip.
With Israel having launched a major incursion into Gaza in late June in response to the abduction of an Israeli soldier, and with tens of thousands of Israeli troops having been sent back into Lebanon, the Israeli public is hardly enthusiastic about the idea of another unilateral pull-out - especially if it means that Hamas militants, armed with rockets, will be perched on the doorstep of Israel's major population centres, able to do far more damage than their counterparts in Gaza.
With his popularity ratings at an all-time low, Mr Olmert knows it will also be impossible to drum up sufficient support for his plan in the Israeli parliament. And, if the prospects for his West Bank plan weren't already all but shattered, they got even worse yesterday when he lost the leading ideologue of the unilateralist idea in his party - justice minister Haim Ramon, who announced he was resigning after being charged with indecent assault.