TODAY and tomorrow, state ceremonies, rallies, special lessons in schools and a variety of other events will mark the first anniversary, in the Hebrew calendar, of the assassination of Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
Yesterday, Ms Yael Dayan, a member of the Knesset from the late Mr Rabin's Labour Party, had scalding tea thrown in her face by an ultra-Orthodox Jew during a visit to Hebron, the West Bank city from which Israel - is apparently preparing at last to withdraw most of its troops. For Ms Dayan, the two events were, sadly, all too clearly related. One year after the assassination, she said, her face slowly turning red from the burn, "we have returned to the worst sort of violence". It would be no great surprise, she added, if hot tea today became bullets tomorrow.
As the anniversary of the Rabin killing has approached, indeed, there are many signs that those on the far right of Israeli religious and political society have failed to learn many lessons from thee assassination, and that the imminent military pullout from Hebron has reignited extremist opposition to compromise.
Yigal Amir, Mr Rabin's convicted killer, was a right-wing Orthodox Jew, who justified the assassination by claiming he had acted with rabbinical sanction, and that he was seeking to prevent the prime minister's traitorously "unJewish" policy of relinquishing West Bank land to the Palestinians.
Now the same forces that fomented the hysterical atmosphere in which the Rabin killing took place are again coming to the fore. And while yesterday's tea- throwing attack was on an opposition politician, even the hardline government of Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, which is generally following policies far more to the taste of the extremist right, is also being attacked over Hebron. Security around Mr Netanyahu and his relatively moderate Minister of Defence, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, has been tightened recently following a number of death threats. Graffiti comparing Mr Netanyahu to Stalin has recently been daubed on walls in central Jerusalem. And, most significantly, more than 200 rabbis have recently signed a petition urging Mr Netanyahu not to approve the military withdrawal from Hebron - not to hand over control of the city, as they put it, to Israel's enemies.
Some of Israel's most prominent far-right politicians are contributing to this re-escalation of opposition to peace and compromise with the Palestinians. Mr Benny Elon, a member of Moledet, the most right-wing party in the Knesset, demonstratively refused to shake hands with Mr Yasser Arafat at a meeting between a Knesset committee and the Palestinian leader in Bethlehem, and told him: "We are sovereign here. When we come to visit you, it will be with tanks."
Earlier this week, Moledet's leader, Mr Rehavam Ze'evi, a former general, angrily brandished a machine gun close to Israeli soldiers and refused to heed an order barring him from visiting a Jewish shrine in a Palestinian neighbourhood of Hebron.
Warning of the likelihood of another descent into political violence, Mr Moshe Negbi, Israel's leading legal commentator, has blamed the police and the judiciary for failing to act firmly against those who seek to undermine the democracy. Although the assassin Amir is serving a life term for the killing, Mr Negbi noted that the rabbis who sanctioned the killing had not been identified and brought to justice and that no action was being taken against rabbis, politicians or others on the far right who are again actively inciting against the government.
Despite being outlawed, shadowy right-wing extremist groups continue to function relatively unhindered. And there is little evidence of a genuine police effort to track down the anonymous callers who have threatened violence recently against ministers, moderate rabbis, judges and other public figures.
Interestingly, the ultra-Orthodox Jew who threw tea in Ms Dayan's face yesterday was caught and handed over to Israeli paramilitary police. Somehow, though, he subsequently got tree, and was again being sought by the police last night.