Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has come closer than at any time since the murder of Yitzhak Rabin to apologising for his role in creating the poisonous climate that preceded the killing.
He was speaking at a parliamentary ceremony marking the second anniversary of the assassination.
Evidently rocked by the massive turnout last Saturday night at a rally that both remembered Rabin and protested against Mr Netanyahu's leadership, the prime minister signalled a new conciliatory tone on Monday when he opened a conference of his Likud party with a minute's silent tribute to Rabin.
Yesterday, in his Knesset address, he went further, declaring: "I am the first to say that I, along with others, must undergo a process of soul-searching" over past actions.
Just a few weeks ago he had whispered into the ear of an elderly rabbinical leader that Rabin's political constituency, the Israeli Labour party and the rest of the left wing, had "forgotten what it means to be Jewish."
Yesterday, by contrast, he turned to Rabin's family, friends and "my political rivals" on the Labour benches, and told them: "I extend a hand in peace, a hand in reconciliation."
There had been suggestions that Labour members might walk out of the Knesset when Mr Netanyahu came to the podium. That would have been in protest at the viciousness of the criticisms he levelled at Rabin in the months before the killing, his refusal since to apologise publicly, and the efforts of some of his ministers to suggest that the Shin Bet security service had somehow colluded in the assassination.
A secret report on the activities of Avishai Raviv, a Shin Bet informer who befriended the assassin, Yigal Amir, is due to be published here today. It is expected to refute some of the outlandish conspiracy theories which have surfaced recently.
In the event, Labour's Knesset members heard Mr Netanyahu out in silence. The party's leader, Mr Ehud Barak, echoed the prime minister's call for dialogue and reconciliation, saying simply: "We have no other people. We have no other country."
The calls for unity from both sides follow a week of bitter argument in Israel, coinciding with the assassination anniversary. A few brave attempts to foster more civilised dialogue between left and right, religious and secular, over Rabin's legacy and the peace process have been dwarfed.
So polarised and angry is the public mood in Israel that a procession of public figures, including retired judges and security chiefs, have been issuing warnings about the likelihood of further political murders. The latest to speak out was a former Shin Bet head, Mr Ya'acov Peri, who lamented "the intolerance, the lack of readiness for conciliation."
Some left-wing politicians, though, were unmoved by Mr Netanyahu's new moderated tone. The prime minister's words, Mr Yossi Sarid of the Meretz party said dryly, had "proven empty all too often in the past."
He noted that only this week, at his Likud party conference, Mr Netanyahu had deceived his own ministers and forced through a change in the party's system for selecting its Knesset representatives - a change that roused fury with Mr Netanyahu in the Likud's Knesset faction. Mr Netanyahu flies to England today and on to the US tomorrow, where he will address a conference of Jewish leaders in Los Angeles. President Clinton will also be in town, but has so far not agreed to meet him.