In a last-ditch effort to prevent the imminent collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process into failure and violence, President Clinton last night announced that he would host summit talks next week between Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, and the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat.
The plan, which was accepted by Mr Barak and Mr Arafat, immediately caused tremors in the Israeli government, with one hard-line coalition party moving to bolt, and another contemplating following suit.
Mr Clinton acknowledged that he was adopting a high-risk strategy, with "no guarantee of success". He noted that "significant differences remain and they involve the most sensitive questions".
But with Mr Arafat threatening a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood by September, and Mr Barak promising to respond by annexing occupied West Bank territory, the US President clearly felt he had nothing to lose by bringing the bickering leaders together.
The summit talks, to begin next Tuesday, will be held at the Camp David retreat, and Mr Clinton displayed a measure of optimism that the location might "inspire" progress: it was at Camp David in September 1978 that Egypt and Israel agreed they would sign a peace treaty within three months and that the Israeli army would withdraw from the Sinai peninsula according to an agreed timetable.
Mr Clinton said he hoped that the parties could "start drawing the contours" of a peace agreement within a matter of days, but that he was setting no limit on the talks.
Mr Nabil Sha'ath, a Palestinian cabinet minister deeply involved in the negotiations, said that the summit was the inevitable consequence of Israeli stalling and that Mr Clinton had "no choice" but to summon the parties.
Mr Barak, who travelled to London and Paris yesterday for talks with the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and President Jacques Chirac, said he would travel to the summit "with a heavy sense of responsibility for the future of the people of Israel" and that he would not sign a deal "that doesn't strengthen the state".
But he will leave behind a highly unstable coalition. Mr Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, last night spurned an invitation to join Mr Barak at the talks. More dramatically, the Interior Minister, Mr Natan Sharansky, announced that he would resign at the next cabinet meeting, on Sunday, leading his Yisrael Ba'aliya immigrant party into opposition.
Leaders of another coalition member, the National Religious Party, were meeting last night to consider following Mr Sharansky's lead. The NRP has strong support among Jewish settlers in the West Bank, many of whom might be asked to relocate to homes inside sovereign Israel under the terms of a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. At a rally last night, Mr Sharansky said that Mr Barak, by going to a summit at which control of much of the West Bank might be relinquished, was acting against the wishes of most Israelis.
Last year's election results, which saw Mr Barak swept into office with a 12 per cent majority over the hard-line Benjamin Netanyahu, suggest, however, that most Israelis do back his peace-making policies.
Yesterday, the prime minister repeated his promise to present any peace deal to the public, either via elections or in a referendum. If he and Mr Arafat can reach a deal, therefore, the departure of Mr Sharansky and the NRP might merely accelerate the process towards elections that Mr Barak might feel confident of winning. If he cannot reach a deal, however, the summit failure would be likely to spell the beginning of the end of his term in office.
While Mr Barak would like to emerge from the seclusion of Camp David with a full and final peace treaty, Mr Arafat is more interested in winning US backing for Palestinian statehood. And it is hard to conceive that what Mr Clinton rightly called the "most sensitive questions" - over the status of Jerusalem, rights of return for Palestinian refugees, and so on - could possibly be resolved in days. Realistically, then, it is Mr Arafat who goes into these talks with the better prospect of achieving his objectives.
For Mr Clinton, entering the last months of his presidency, the summit represents a genuine effort to prevent the outbreak of violence that both sides seem to think increasingly inevitable if September 13th, the deadline Israel and the Palestinians set for signing a permanent deal, passes with no dramatic breakthrough.
"To delay this gathering, to remain stalled," the President noted starkly, "is simply no longer an option."
Peace talks have a successful precedent in Camp David