The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a PLO faction that has carried out hundreds of attacks on "Zionist" targets in Israel and elsewhere in the last three decades, has apparently decided to abandon the armed struggle against Israel.
Founded by Dr George Habash in 1967, the PFLP was most active in the 1970s, using airplane hijackings and other attacks to highlight its opposition to the Jewish state.
It opposed the Oslo peace process initiated by Mr Yasser Arafat and Mr Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 and, although attracting only marginal support in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, continued to stage infrequent attacks on Israeli targets in the occupied territories.
Yesterday, though, its top West Bank activist, Mr Ahmed Katamesh, was released from an Israeli jail after almost six years, in a deal that appears to signal the PFLP's abandonment of violence.
Mr Katamesh, who was never put on trial but was instead held under so-called "administrative detention", said he was speaking on behalf of the PFLP and that neither he nor his colleagues would henceforth "engage in any violent actions" against Israel.
It is not yet clear whether the Damascus-based Dr Habash is intending to publicly endorse the change of stance. But Israeli officials are hailing what they see as a first crack in the wall of Palestinian rejectionism. They are hoping the alphabet soup of other PLO splinter groups, including the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and the PFLP-General Command, will also begin to moderate their positions.
Even such a shift, however, would be unlikely to encompass the Islamic radicals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who remain steadfastly opposed to any accommodation with Israel.
Mr Katamesh, who was the longest-held administrative detainee, was freed along with four PFLP colleagues. A well-built, bearded and charismatic man, he was rapturously greeted at his Al-Birah home, north of Jerusalem, by his wife and daughter, amid a shower of yellow petals and beneath a PFLP banner that welcomed "the leader, teacher and comrade".
In an Israeli television interview, Mr Katamesh said he did not believe the Oslo accords would bring peace, and that he thought the high growth-rate of the Palestinian population would ultimately prove the most effective means of pursuing the struggle.
Israeli sources say it was Mr Katamesh who initiated the deal that led to his release yesterday. However, Israel, which currently holds some 200 administrative detainees, has been releasing these prisoners in growing numbers recently, amid a public campaign against the policy of detention without trial.