TODAY, as Israel's marks the 48th anniversary of its independence, its aircraft will not be participating in the annual celebratory fly past.
Israel's fighter jets are busy elsewhere, maintaining the assault on south Lebanon launched by the Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, two weeks ago, ostensibly to put a permanent halt to Hizbullah rocket fire across the border into northern Israel.
The two way traffic continued yesterday with more Katyusha rockets thudding into the towns of northern Israel, and further Israeli air raids. One destroyed a water tank supplying 20 southern Lebanese villages.
The US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, persevered with his thankless task of trying "to engineer an accord with which both Damascus and Jerusalem can live. Although he insisted that his brokering efforts had now entered "an intensive period", neither Israel nor Syrian officials believe a truce is imminent.
In Independence Day interviews, Mr Peres yesterday defended the Grapes of Wrath bombardment as being the only action possible to counter the intensifying Hizbullah rocket fire and the growing daring of Hizbullah gunmen in attacking Israeli and Israeli backed forces in southern Lebanon.
He also tried to defend last Thursday's shelling of a UN base at the village of Qana, in which 91 Lebanese civilians were killed.
He explained that the Israeli troops who fired on the base were under the erroneous impression that fellow soldiers stationed nearby had been hit and wounded by Hizbullah rockets and shells fired from the area of the base.
"No one had any idea that there were hundreds of refugees there," he insisted.
When he gave the green light for the operation in south Lebanon two weeks ago, Mr Peres must have looked forward to celebrating Independence Day as the architect of a successful military mission.
The opposition Likud had been preparing a campaign of election advertising based on the assertion that he was soft on security, and he doubtless hoped that sending the Israel defence forces into Lebanon would have forced the Likud political strategists into an urgent rethink.
The Likud has had to shelve that campaign. But so far that is just about the only concrete benefit to have accrued to Mr Peres.
The killings at Qana have destroyed any international sympathy for the Israeli assault, and badly dented Mr Peres's image as a peacemaker in much of the Arab world.
Even King Hussein of Jordan, Israel's closest Arab ally, is understand to have cancelled a planned speech to a pro Israel lobby group in Washington next week, because he did not wish to be photographed alongside Mr Peres at this juncture.
Most Israelis were horrified by the television footage of the carnage at Qana, but only a few voices called for a halt to the bombardment in its aftermath.
While Mr Peres is being castigated abroad, he is not Israeli Arab spokesmen apart from being castigated, at home. The impact on his political fortunes and thus on the May 29th elections, will depend on the terms of the eventual ceasefire.
It is now up to President Assad of Syria - the one man with the power to rein in Hizbullah - to decide Mr Peres's fate. He can extricate Mr Peres with a face saving deal, or leave him muddied in the Lebanese quagmire.
David Horovitz is managing editor of The Jerusalem Report.
Reuter adds:
In Gaza the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, urged the PLO's parliament in exile to hasten a crucial vote on amending the call in the PLO charter for the destruction of Israel.
Addressing the Palestine National Council (PNC) for the second time in two days, Mr Arafat asserted that, the PLO must honour its pledge in peace deals with Israel to change its founding charter of 1964.
"We have commitments and we have to fulfill our commitments," he said.
Israel has made amending the charter a condition for its withdrawal from the West Bank town, of, Hebron and for starting negotiations on the final status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.