Land for peace is supposed to underlie the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians which define the current peace process between them. Both the principle and the accords look increasingly forlorn after the resignation from Mr Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet coalition of the foreign minister, Mr Levy and his small parliamentary faction, on the domestic issue of budget priorities. Everyone knows his departure deprives that cabinet of its most influential and one of its last proponents of land for peace.
Alongside the lengthy delays in implementing agreements reached under the accords there now looms a crucial issue of principle - whether to take a further step towards withdrawing Israeli troops from occupied Palestinian territory. This is a commitment entered into under the accords, and well overdue. But Mr Netanyahu's government, comprising a motley group of ultra-nationalists and Zionists, ultra-Orthodox and immigrant parties alongside more mainstream Likud members, is loath to take anything more than the most token step towards implementing it. The National Religious Party says a two-digit redeployment or withdrawal from Palestinian lands would critically affect Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, despite the commitment that up to 30 per cent of land should be transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction, and the settlements discontinued.
In the absence of a foreign minister and with his defence minister, Mr Mordechai, away on business, Mr Netanyahu had a consultation with a sworn opponent of the whole process, Mr Ariel Sharon, before meeting the visiting United States envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, last night. The message should not have been lost on the visiting mediator: this Israeli government teeters on the brink of a collapse which it may only be able to retrieve by resorting to a much more belligerent appeal to its core domestic constituency in rejecting the whole land-for-peace formula. If Mr Netanyahu can survive the next few months in office by his famous tactical capacity he might be able to face the electorate in a summer or autumn election on the still-popular basis that land must not the swapped for peace because Israeli security cannot be guaranteed by a neighbouring Palestinian state.
Many Israelis and Arabs and most of the rest of the world will contemplate this stand-off with the US with impatience for a political change in Israel that would allow elections to change its government by bringing back the Labour Party into office. It supported the land-for-peace option and was willing to allow that Israel's security could be so guaranteed. But even if the Netanyahu government were to fall its successor would have to struggle with the legacy of his period in office. It includes not only outright hostility to the basis on which the Oslo accords were reached, but now a wider and deeper scepticism among the Israeli public about their capacity to deliver security, after repeated atrocities against Israeli civilians. The US pressure on the Netanyahu government is welcome, but it remains to be seen how much it will impress Israeli public opinion.