Just over five years ago, when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat launched the Oslo peace process with awkward handshakes at a grandiose ceremony on the White House lawn, it was clear to supporters and critics alike that here was a moment of truth, a turning point, the start of a new era.

If, as it was looking increasingly likely last night, the frenzied stopstart negotiations on the Wye River in Maryland are to yield another agreement, another well-hyped White House ceremony, let no one be fooled into thinking that a further historic step has been taken toward genuine Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.

It is a game of chicken that has been played out at the Wye Summit this past week. And not between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but between the Israelis and the Americans. The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, months ago accepted the US "package deal" for reviving a peace process stalled for almost two years - with its central provisions for a 13 per cent Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, and a mechanism designed to ensure consistent Palestinian efforts to prevent Islamic extremist attacks on Israeli targets.

Mr Netanyahu has not overnight become a friend and partner of Mr Arafat. The newly-installed Israeli Foreign Minister, Ariel Sharon, declined to shake hands with Mr Arafat at their first negotiating session early this week. No, if there is to be a deal, it is because the Americans insisted upon it, and Mr Netanyahu, forced to choose between antagonising his own coalition right-wingers and antagonising the leader of the West, decided that Mr Clinton would make the more dangerous enemy.

Wednesday's threat by Mr Netanyahu to walk out of the talks, underlined by the dramatic display of Israeli delegates' suitcases packed and ready for take-off, was trumped by the Americans. State Department spokesman James Rubin made crystal clear that, were the Israelis to depart, they'd be publicly branded the peace-breakers, and the Clinton Administration would find many ways to make its displeasure felt.

In the game of chicken, Mr Netanyahu blinked first. The suitcases were unpacked. The Israelis stayed on.

The real Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, over the really sticky issues, haven't even begun yet. By next May the two sides were supposed to have resolved such complex and emotive disputes as the future status of Jerusalem, the rights of return for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars, the fate of the settlements, and the limitations, if any, to be placed on independent Palestinian statehood.

Nobody has ever believed that the mutual distrust between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat would make those talks anything but hellish. Eight days spent arguing bitterly over an interim deal, with even the semi-permanent presence of a frustrated US President proving no incentive to more rapid progress, have now underlined quite how impossible those "final status" talks are going to be. If, that is, the two sides ever get to them.

Because, even if the way is now being cleared for an accord-signing conclusion to the Wye Summit, that is no guarantee of the accord being speedily implemented.

No sooner has the ink dried on the deal than Mr Netanyahu will have to carry it back to Jerusalem to face some extremely discordant music.

Learning that the draft deal does not provide for the extradition to Israel of Palestinians suspected of murderous attacks on Israelis, three Ministers from Mr Netanyahu's own Likud Party signalled last night they could well vote against the accord.

The Foreign Minister, Mr Sharon, told Mr Netanyahu, quite amazingly, before taking up his post, that he would vote against any deal like this one, that included a withdrawal from more than 9 per cent of the West Bank. At least four other Ministers are capable of defying Mr Netanyahu in the cabinet vote, which leaves him staring at a majority of one, if he's lucky.

Even if the accord does squeeze through the cabinet, it is certain to deeply destabilise the governing, multi-party coalition, which enjoys only a narrow Knesset majority and would be vulnerable to no-confidence motions.

The moderate opposition Labour Party has said it will vote with Mr Netanyahu on any moves to advance the peace process, but work tirelessly to unseat him on all other issues. It's hardly a recipe for energetic government.

With nothing but a series of parliamentary crises to look forward to, the Prime Minister might well decide to initiate elections himself, quite possibly before implementing the new peace deal. He would tell voters that he had negotiated the best possible accord for Israel, striking a much tougher bargain than Labour's wimpish leaders could have managed, and that if they trust him with a second term, he'll ensure the best possible "final status" agreement as well.

The vast majority of the Israeli public supports cautious progress towards peace with the Palestinians, even if the uncompromising settler hardliners, with their roadblocking protests and noisy Jerusalem demonstrations, sometimes help create the opposite impression.

Given that, and given Mr Netanyahu's remarkable presentation skills, it would be a fool who would bet against a successful reelection campaign.

But elections, of course, spell delay, weeks and months when peace moves are pushed aside.

The key to the domestic Israeli impact of the deal will lie in the precise details - the nature of the new security "mechanism", the scope of any agreements on a final Israeli troop withdrawal as mandated by the Oslo framework, the precise arrangements for dealing with Palestinian militants, undertakings on settlement freezes and Palestinian prisoner releases, the terms of any Palestinian commitment to draft a new PLO charter, and so on. Mr Netanyahu's current political partners will put the accord under a magnifying glass and, their own individual political considerations to the fore, determine whether or not they want to live with it. But whatever becomes of Mr Netanyahu's coalition in the light of a Wye Summit deal, however much political chaos it causes in Israel, it remains merely an interim accord, a small step forward, taken with the greatest reluctance by a hardline Israeli Prime Minister.

Mr Clinton has hopefully staved off the death of the Middle East peace process. And maybe that does merit a festive ceremony at the White House. But five years down the road from that first handshake, the pioneers of the Oslo process - one of them murdered, the other looking ever less robust - would have expected to have had rather more to celebrate.