With elections now only a month away, the latest opinion polls make grim reading for Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak.
His Foreign Minister, Mr Shlomo Ben-Ami, and some members of the Clinton administration's peace team, still appear to believe they may be able to forge a peace deal with the Palestinians before President Clinton leaves office in two weeks time.
But Mr Barak has indicated that he no longer regards this as feasible and much of the Israeli public, it appears, has given up on him and opposes the concessions he was ready to make for such a deal.
A survey published yesterday by Israel's leading tabloid daily, Yedioth Ahronot, shows Mr Barak stuck on a paltry 32 per cent, while his opposition rival in the upcoming prime ministerial elections, the Likud Party leader, Gen Ariel Sharon, has the backing of 50 per cent of voters.
That poll, incredibly, represented the good news for Mr Barak: the bad news came in a survey by the rival tabloid, Ma'ariv, which shows Mr Sharon leading by 50 per cent to Mr Barak's miserable 22 per cent. Both polls had 4.5 per cent margins of error.
Turning that kind of deficit around inside a month, Mr Barak acknowledged yesterday, would be a "tough struggle". But, publicly, at least, he says he's still confident he can win.
His ally, Mr Yossi Sarid, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, observed that it would be "surrealistic for the man who sparked the Intifada three months ago to win a prize for it", a reference to the visit by Mr Sharon to the Temple Mount on September 28th.
That visit prompted the eruption of West Bank and Gaza violence - violence that has seen some 360 people, most of them Palestinians, killed in clashes and bombings.
Yesterday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who was shouting Islamic slogans and climbing up a fence at an army post in Gaza.
Israeli soldiers also shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian woman in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian hospital officials said. Another 18year-old Palestinian woman was shot and injured, they said.
There were clashes, too, outside Ramallah.
The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mr Yasser Arafat, reportedly promised Mr Clinton in Washington this week that he would rearrest Islamic militants released from his jails and make greater efforts to stem the clashes.
The surveys suggest, however, that most Israeli Jewish voters have lost faith in the viability of a peace partnership with Mr Arafat.
Ironically, other survey findings suggest, most Israeli Arab voters appear to have lost faith in the good intentions of Mr Barak. This is largely as a consequence of the killing of 12 Israeli Arabs by Israeli police in the early days of the violence - all of which is smoothing the path to the premiership for Mr Sharon.