At dawn this morning, Israeli soldiers based in Dotan, at the northern tip of the West Bank near the Palestinian city of Jenin, will drive out into the surrounding countryside and lay out streams of concrete blocks painted yellow and black - the new demarcations lines between areas of Israeli and Palestinian control. By lunchtime, the blocks should all be in place, and Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority will have gained partial control of 2 per cent more of the West Bank, and full control of another 7 per cent area where, until today, authority had been shared with the Israelis.
In January 1997, in the last major Israeli-Palestinian peace move, the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed to relinquish control of some 80 per cent of Hebron, all other West Bank cities having been turned over to Mr Arafat a year earlier. But with Hebron, Mr Netanyahu was merely implementing a deal he had inherited on becoming prime minister the previous May.
And so today's withdrawal represents a historic precedent: the first time that a right-wing Israeli government has - albeit hugely reluctantly, and with none of the good will that characterised Yitzhak Rabin's peacemaking with Mr Arafat - negotiated, signed and implemented an accord giving up West Bank land.
At Shaked, Ganim and Kadim, three settlements near to Jenin which, from today, will become virtual Israeli islands inside Palestinian territory, residents have been reacting to their uncomfortable new reality with some surprise. "Wow, suddenly my house is on the border," said one Shaked woman.
Most members of those settlements were attracted by large homes and gardens at low prices, rather than an ideological commitment to the land. And so there are already some mutterings about leaving, about moving back inside sovereign Israeli territory. But many of the settlers sound quite sanguine. "We've never had any problems with our (Palestinian) neighbours," said Irit Tsarfati.
The final vote sanctioning today's pullback - seven ministers in favour, with five against, three abstaining and two abroad - hardly represented a resounding show of support, especially since even the ultra-sceptical Mr Netanyahu acknowledged that the Palestinians had fulfilled their commitments.
Mr Natan Sharansky, the trade minister who helped negotiate this withdrawal at the Wye Summit last month, was one of the abstentions. And there is now a very real possibility, as the Wye deal proceeds over the next few weeks, that Mr Netanyahu may not be able to command a cabinet majority for the further pull-backs.
That, in turn, would lead to another peace stalemate and/or new elections. Coalition Knesset members say they don't know how much longer the government, so torn over the Wye deal, can survive - but few believe it will see out its term to the year 2000.