NO SOONER had Mr Benjamin Netanyahu completed his first meeting with the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, held yesterday afternoon at the crossing point between Israel and the largely Arafat controlled Gaza Strip, than the Israeli Prime Minister travelled hurriedly to Tel Aviv.
He had already held one press conference - a fairly sombre affair notable mainly for the distance between his podium and that of Mr Arafat, and for the exaggerated politeness with which he invited the Palestinian leader to add any comments to his own generally terse answers.
But that media show had been on neutral ground, conducted in three languages (English, Hebrew and Arabic), and with Mr Arafat a constant presence at his side. Mr Netanyahu wanted to stage his own performance on home territory.
And so he convened a second press conference in the Journalists' House in Tel Aviv, and made a far more impassioned appearance. He talked a little about the immediate concrete results of the landmark summit: the agreement that a high level "steering committee" would resume negotiations today on all outstanding issues - including the much delayed Israeli troop withdrawal from Hebron, and the easing of the six month restrictions on Palestinians entering Israel - and that Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, the Israeli defence minister, could meet Mr Arafat on Sunday.
But he seemed intent mainly on pre empting his Israeli critics, and there will be many - waiting to heap scorn, derision and anger on him for talking to Mr Arafat.
The least threatening attacks will come from the left - from Mr Shimon Peres's Labour Party - still incensed that Mr Netanyahu derided them for years for talking to Mr Arafat and then went and did the same thing himself when he realised there was no other choice. But Labour is harmless deep down, its activists are pleased Mr Netanyahu has swallowed his pride, recognised Mr Arafat and, hopefully, breathed new life into peacemaking after three months of stalemate and ebbing, goodwill.
More dangerous sniping will come - indeed, is already coming - from within his own Likud party, and from the political forces to the right of the Likud, the groupings ideologically and/or religiously opposed to any dealings on an equal basis with the Palestinians.
In his own cabinet, Mr Netanyahu barely has majority support for talks with Mr Arafat. Mr Benny Begin, son of the late Likud prime minister, and Mr Ariel Sharon, the indomitable Minister of Infrastructure, continue to regard Mr Arafat as a terrorist - Mr Sharon regularly brands him a "war criminal" and wants him put on trial for crimes against the Jews - and Mr Netanyahu as a fool and a weakling for working directly with him.
Plenty of lower ranking Likud members share the assessment as do many members of the Likud's religious coalition partners. But their instinct for self preservation means a coalition crisis over yesterday's summit seems unlikely.
No, the really worrying opposition will come from outside the political arena from the street. From the right wing activists who feel, with some justification, that it was their support that tipped a close fought election Mr Netanyahu's way, and that he has now betrayed them and himself. As recently as February, after all, Mr Netanyahu was adamant that he would not contemplate meeting Mr Arafat.
At his Tel Aviv press conference, the prime minister did his best to explain the almost inexplicable - claiming that his firmer approach to peacemaking had forced a dramatic improvement in Palestinian attitudes. He spoke proudly of the closure of three small Palestinian offices in East Jerusalem, and with more understandable satisfaction of the ongoing lull in Islamic extremist attacks on Israeli targets.
But while Mr Netanyahu used all his formidable presentational skills to castigate the previous government's "hasty" to peacemaking, and stress own superior methods, and while he tried manfully to show why talks with Mr Arafat were justified, necessary, indeed essential, few of his most severe and most fanatical critics will have been persuaded. Their objections - the same mix of religious and nationalist objections that led Yigal Amir to kill Yitzhak Rabin last November - have not been assuaged.