Mr Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister who refused to believe that his time had passed, last night lost what must certainly be his last battle to regain the leadership of his country, without even entering the race.
The 10-member left-wing Meretz party, on whom Mr Peres (77) had depended to formally endorse his prime ministerial nomination, rebuffed him, albeit gently. Hours before the legal deadline for registering candidacy in the prime ministerial election on February 6th, Meretz voted not to split the centre-left of Israeli politics and instead to stand by the incumbent Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, who will now battle for re-election against only one opponent, the right-wing opposition leader, Gen Ariel Sharon.
Meretz has been urging Mr Barak to grant Mr Peres a leading role in the peace negotiations with the Palestinians, but Mr Barak may not be overly inclined to reward Mr Peres for an abortive bid that many Labour Party members privately describe as near treachery.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Shlomo Ben-Ami, who is heading the Israeli delegation in Washington, was rendered almost speechless when asked to comment on Mr Peres's wouldbe candidacy, finally managing to stammer that it was "far from helping" and that the attempt at peacemaking ought to supersede any personal ambitions.
Although he has failed five times to win the premiership outright, Mr Peres argued that, because polls show him to have a better chance than Mr Barak of defeating Mr Sharon, he ought to be the candidate of the centre-left.
Mr Barak's angry response, in an unproductive meeting yesterday evening, was that Labour had already endorsed his candidacy, that he is making the most serious effort ever mounted by an Israeli prime minister to achieve a permanent peace accord with the Palestinians, and that Mr Peres ought to be backing him, not undermining him.
That peace effort continued in Washington yesterday, with the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, joining the talks. Both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are talking in cautiously optimistic terms, and nobody has publicly ridiculed the January 10th deadline that President Clinton said would have to be met were a treaty to be signed during his presidency.
The Palestinian negotiator, Mr Yasser Abed-Rabbo, asserted: "We could have an agreement on Saturday. We can be very close to an agreement - or very far, depending on those details."
Meanwhile, violence continues in the West Bank and Gaza. Two more Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers in Gaza yesterday, and an Israeli driver was shot dead by Palestinian gunmen on a road outside Jerusalem last night.