THE atmosphere was electric. The sense of anticipation palpable. Mr David Levy, the brooding Israeli Foreign Minister, who had been telling close friends for days that he had lost all confidence in the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, was breaking his public silence at a press conference.
Would he announce his resignation, a move that would automatically prompt several other key figures to quit the coalition and thus trigger new elections?
Or would he declare that he had made his peace with the Prime Minister, and that he backed Mr Netanyahu's proposed cabinet shuffle, thus restoring a degree of calm to the government benches?
A Moroccan-born immigrant who favours complex sentences, Mr Levy is never the most succinct of speakers. And yesterday, he was at his rhetorical best. So it was only after he had been talking for several minutes that it became clear that the Foreign Minister hadn't actually made his mind up whether to praise Mr Netanyahu or to bury him.
He spoke self-servingly of his unswerving loyalty to the Prime Minister in the little more than a year that the government has ruled. His castigated that government's "deficiencies.
The reporters in the Foreign Ministry briefing room held their breaths. Surely the next sentence would bring confirmation that the loyalty was at an end, that Mr Levy had had enough. But no, the Foreign Minister drew back from the brink, acknowledging that he was unsure of how he should proceed. In the next few days, he promised at length, "I will decide on my steps, on the continuation of my membership in the government."
For all the absent clarity of purpose, Mr Levy's uncertain performance yesterday actually spoke volumes. Here, clearly, was a man deeply uncomfortable about working with a Prime Minister who has led the peace process with Mr Yasser Arafat into a dead-end, and reduced an Israel nearing peace with all its neighbours one short year ago to a virtual pariah state, forced to prepare itself for the possibility of a new round of armed clashes with the Palestinians and even full-fledged conflict with the Syrians.
Mr Levy's problem is that, were he to trigger the collapse of the government, his own career might disappear along with it. He bolted Mr Netanyahu's Likud party before last year's elections, and has yet to establish his new Gesher faction as a credible vote-getter. The Foreign Minister is not about to commit political suicide.
Similar considerations apply to two other coalition parties - the four- member, centrist Third Way grouping, and the seven-member immigrant party led by former Soviet prisoner, Mr Natan Sharansky. All regard Mr Netanyahu with barely concealed contempt. But all are reluctant to place their fate in the hands of the public just yet.
So while Mr Netanyahu has still not been able to reshuffle his cabinet, installing Mr Ariel Sharon as his finance minister, neither is he facing an acute coalition crisis. Not this week, anyway. Next week, though, the Labour opposition has tabled yet another motion of no confidence in his government. Maybe by then, Mr Levy will have decided on his steps.