The balance of power in Palestinian society tilted dramatically in favour of the Islamic militants yesterday, as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, returned to a hero's welcome in Gaza as part of an exchange deal imposed on a humiliated Israel.
Exploding the last shreds of the pretence that the sheikh had been graciously set free by Israel, given medical treatment in Amman and was now coming home to Gaza as part of an unlikely "humanitarian gesture," the paraplegic sheikh was stretchered into his homecoming helicopter at the very moment the other half of the bargain was being completed.
Two Mossad hitmen, who had bungled a September 25th attempt on the life of a Hamas official in Amman, Khaled Mashaal, were set free from Jordan and made their own separate helicopter journey back to Israel.
To smooth their release, Israel also freed 20 Palestinian and Jordanian detainees yesterday, and is to free up to 50 more shortly.
Tellingly, while 15,000 Hamas loyalists crowded into a Gaza City football stadium to greet the sheikh after his unexpectedly curtailed eight years in an Israeli jail, the Palestinian Authority head, Mr Yasser Arafat, spent the day in the West Bank. He sent his wife, Suha, to the welcoming ceremony instead.
Along with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which had placed the fight to suppress Hamas at the heart of its policy agenda, Mr Arafat is the hapless casualty of what is routinely being described in Israel now as the "fiasco" in Jordan.
Had Israel acceded in the past to his repeated pleas to free the sheikh, and done so as a genuine gesture of goodwill, Mr Arafat could have credibly portrayed himself as the peerless unifier of the Palestinian people. It is conceivable that a grateful Hamas might have reconsidered its hitherto uncompromising opposition to Israel's existence, and moderated its unstinting criticisms of Mr Arafat for entering the peace process.
Instead, the sheikh's release by a reluctant, embarrassed Israel, is bound to reinvigorate the Islamic militants as an alternative to Mr Arafat's regime, and will make it virtually impossible for Mr Arafat to move firmly against Hamas in the future.
Similarly, King Hussein of Jordan, who insisted on the sheikh's release in a bid to minimise Islamic anger over the failed Israeli assassination bid in his capital, might have earned Hamas's immediate gratitude but may now find himself threatened by a newly popular and euphoric Muslim Brotherhood.
Sheikh Yassin's first public remarks, before Mr Mashaal helped lift him on to his helicopter out of Amman, gave no clear indication of the direction in which he will now try to steer the movement he founded in the 1980s.
He spoke of working "to restore our rights by way of peace" - which gave some weight to a CNN report this week that Hamas had been offering Israel, before the bungled assassination bid on Mr Mashaal, a 10-year moratorium on suicide bombings in return for a role in peacemaking.
But then the sheikh added that "the ceasefire cannot be obtained until the occupation is over". And another Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantizi, said in Gaza that the jihad against Israel would continue until an Islamic state was established "on all of Palestine"; on land, that is, covering not just the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but Israel, too.
Inside Israel, Mr Netanyahu announced the establishment of "a clarification committee" to investigate the failed Mossad operation, including his own actions.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report