AHEAD of schedule, and by a larger than expected majority, Palestinian leaders in Gaza voted last night to excise all references to the destruction of Israel from the PLO's guiding covenant.
On the impassioned urgings of the Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat, delegates to a meeting of the Palestinian National Council voted 504 to 54 - to cancel those clauses of the covenant that contradict the agreements of mutual recognition signed by Mr Arafat and the late Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin on behalf of the PLO and Israel, when they began their reconciliation process almost three years ago.
In effect, one Palestinian official said last night, the vote "amounts to the cancellation of the entire covenant." Indeed, last night's meeting ordered an Arafat appointed legal committee to draw up a new charter within the next six months.
For Mr Rabin's successor, Mr Shimon Peres, currently preoccupied with seeking a face saving truce to end the fighting in Lebanon, the overwhelming vote in Gaza was a welcome boost - and a pleasant way to mark on Israel's 48th Independence Day yesterday.
Mr Peres had begun the day meeting worried northerners in a bomb shelter close to the Lebanon border, but ended it by making a delighted telephone call of congratulation to Mr Arafat.
Mr Peres described the vote as nothing less than "the most important ideological change" of the century, and said Mr Arafat had now proved himself a genuine peace partner. The Palestinian leader, he said, was fighting terrorism and now had changed the PLO's Covenant "exactly as he promised."
Mr Peres may benefit greatly from the change if it persuades sceptical Israelis that the troubled peace process is worth sustaining, and convinces them that the prime minister, and not his hard line Likud rival, Mr Benjamin Netanahu, is the best man to plead Israel for the next four years. Israel goes to the polls on May 29th.
Mr Arafat had used all his tactical acumen to ensure a successful outcome, appointing dozens of new members to the PNC, and instructing his Fatah loyalists on the council to vote as one in favour of the changes - which they did.
For more than 30 years, the covenant had been the guiding document of the PLO specifying the destruction of the skate of Israel as a central goal, and the "armed struggle" as the means to achieve it. But Mr Arafat told PNC delegates that only by changing the charter could the Palestinians expect to see the peace process move forward towards independent Palestinian statehood.
"Make up your minds," he urged wavering delegates. "Are we going to have a Palestinian dream or not, are we going to have statehood or not? We don't want to go astray again."
Israel's image is hardly sparkling in the Arab world at present. Its ongoing assault on south Lebanon has left even its warmest Arab allies, like Jordan's King Hussein, aghast. And the Palestinian economy is being devastated by the stringent Israeli closure orders clamped on Gaza and the West Bank for the past two months, since a series of Islamic extremist suicide bombings.
In that light, the vote last night seems even more significant, and Mr Arafat is likely to be rewarded by Mr Peres with a rapid return to the peace process framework - including a rescheduling of the delayed Israeli troop withdrawal from Hebron, which could now begin as soon as next month.