NORMALLY, it's business as usual in the gradual process of peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians: the Israeli government yesterday reiterated its commitment to withdraw troops from the West Bank city of Hebron, and Israeli and Palestinian officials are tomorrow to begin a new series of talks on the final status of the West Bank.
But in reality, the peace process has been suspended - at least until Israel's general elections on May 29th, and quite possibly after that if Mr Shimon Peres and his governing Labour party are defeated.
Yesterday's bland repetition of the pledge to leave Hebron was designed to mask the fact that Mr Peres seems increasingly reluctant to order that withdrawal before election day, fearing it will cost him votes.
And tomorrow's start of "final status" negotiations will be a symbolic event only. The talks are scheduled to last for up to three years, with the most complicated aspects of coexistence on the agenda - including the future of Jerusalem and West Bank settlements, the question of how many Palestinian refugees will be allowed to return and to where, and the precise demarcation of border lines between sovereign Israel and the Palestinian areas.
With less than four weeks left in office before polling day, Mr Peres's government is in no position to start substantive talks on any of those issues with Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
Should he win the elections and continue to oversee the peace talks, Mr Peres's likely opening negotiating stances are well known - a desire to retain Israeli sovereignty throughout Jerusalem, to permit refugees to return only to areas under Mr Arafat's control, and to seek to expand Israeli sovereignty to encompass at least some of the West Bank settlements located near the current Israeli border.
If the opposition Likud prevails, however, the position is much less clear. The Likud leader, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has toned down some of his criticisms of the peace process recently, in an attempt to win over undecided Israeli voters, and even gave rare praise to Mr Arafat last week for cancelling anti Israeli clauses of the PLO Covenant.
But Mr Netanyahu's cabinet would include more intransigent hard liners like the former defence minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, who has been calling for the annexation of parts of Hebron, and Gen Rafael Eitan, a former chief of staff whose contempt for the peace process stems from his fundamental mistrust of the Arabs.
A flurry of opinion polls published in the past few days put Mr Peres an average of five or six percentage points ahead of Mr Netanyahu. But it is the challenger who is fighting a more effective campaign so far, with more activists on the streets, more posters on the billboards, and a more energetic approach overall.
In Tel Aviv this evening, tens of thousands of Israelis are expected at a gathering marking six months since the assassination of Mr Peres's predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin. Opinion polls just before his death suggested that Mr Rabin, too, might have had a hard time defeating Mr Netanyahu.
But the killing produced a big swing of support to Labour polls soon after the assassination gave Mr Peres a 60 to 28 per cent lead over Mr Netanyahu. Some advisers urged Mr Peres to call a snap election there and then. He may come to regret that he did not so.