Early yesterday, when firm details of the Wye Summit deal began emerging in Israel, the Settlement Council, the umbrella group representing the 150,000-plus Jewish settlers of the West Bank, issued a press release describing the accord as "treachery".
Immediately politicians, rabbis and other members of the public jammed the Settlement Council's switchboard to protest. Settler leaders had used that kind of language to delegitimise Yitzhak Rabin's government between 1993 and 1995, ran the common complaint, and the world knows where that led.
The council's director, Mr Aharon Domb, quickly set about correcting the damage, issuing a statement that merely called the new deal a "capitulation", and giving a series of radio interviews apologising for the unhappy choice of language in the original release.
That little semantic incident demonstrates two things that will become increasingly apparent in the next few days and weeks: that the hardline opponents of the land-for-peace equation with the Palestinians remain as uncompromising and as forceful in expressing their opposition as they were in the Rabin era; and that, in contrast to that earlier period, a substantial majority of the Israeli public is not particularly sympathetic to their plight.
It has often been suggested that only a right-wing government in Israel can gain the necessary widespread public support to make peace. That theory was undermined by the Rabin-engineered 1994 treaty with Jordan. But perhaps it holds more true where the Palestinians are concerned.
Mr Rabin could never get more than 60 per cent of the country behind the Oslo process; at the time of his murder, that had fallen to 50 per cent or less. It is a safe bet, however, that the interim deal reached yesterday in Maryland will be welcomed by three-quarters or even more of Israelis; the entire moderate and left-wing camp, and much of the right, too, leaving the settlers marginalised.
Even after the "treachery" accusation had been hurriedly withdrawn, the invective hurled at Mr Netanyahu from the far right yesterday was vicious and threatening. Mr Michael Kleiner, leader of a bloc of some 12 Knesset members firmly resolved to bringing down Mr Netanyahu over the deal, charged him with "giving in to blackmail," and told him he had "nothing to come home for . . . We shall try to stop it in any we can. We shall topple the government."
Mr Rehavam Zeevy, leader of a two-man faction that advocates the "transfer" of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to other Arab countries, who just a few weeks ago was being invited by Mr Netanyahu to join the coalition, called the agreement "a surrender to terrorism, to Arafat the war criminal."
But although there are more than enough right-wing critics in the Knesset to destroy Mr Netanyahu's current coalition, composed as it is of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties and enjoying only a narrow majority, they appear to be mobilising too late to prevent the implementation of the new agreement.
The opposition Labour Party has already pledged its support to see the deal safely through the Knesset, and a firm timetable has been finalised for the three phases of the new Israeli withdrawal from occupied West Bank land, a 12week timetable immune to the chaos that now seems imminent in the Israeli political system.
New elections would in any case take a minimum of two to three months to organise, by which time the Israeli pullout would be completed, or nearly so.
Indeed there appear to be only two scenarios under which the deal could yet be stopped. The first is a consequence of the step-by-step format in which the deal has been structured: small Israeli land handovers, in exchange for Palestinian moves to amend the PLO charter, collect illegal weaponry, jail militants alleged to have orchestrated attacks on Israel, and so on.
Israeli officials in Maryland made clear last night that Israel would not withdraw unless the terms of the accord are met to the letter at each stage.
The second scenario involves Hamas. The Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, yesterday issued renewed threats to strike at Israeli targets. If carried out, such bombings could destroy public confidence in the partnership with Mr Yasser Arafat, as did the four Hamas bombings in early 1996.
The Israeli prime minister at the time, Mr Shimon Peres, stuck by Mr Arafat and was ridiculed by Mr Netanyahu, who rode to power early that summer promising the magical "peace with security." Were there to be a recurrence of the bombings, Mr Netanyahu, who has this weekend effectively jettisoned the settlers and the other hardliners, would likely jettison Mr Arafat and, ironically, attempt to re-embrace the very critics who are now trying to bring him down.