A clear majority of Israelis came to the realisation that they could not indefinitely continue to rule over 1.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, writes Peter Hirschberg, in Jerusalem
Driving along Israel's highways in the weeks leading to the withdrawal from Gaza, one got the distinct impression that opponents of the pullout were in the ascendant. It seemed that the vast majority of Israelis were opposed to prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the northern West Bank.
The colour orange, adopted by the anti-pullout camp as the symbol of its opposition, seemed ubiquitous. Orange ribbons flapped from car aerials, roadside barriers and lamp-posts. The sea of orange drowned out the colour blue, chosen by the pro-pullout camp as the symbol of its support for Sharon's disengagement plan.
But the visual superiority achieved by those opposed to the pullout was misleading. The majority of Israelis have supported the withdrawal. The fact that they did not take to the streets in large numbers to demonstrate this support should not be misconstrued.
Granted, many Israelis have found it difficult to drum up enthusiasm for a move that is unilateral, which is not the product of negotiations with the Palestinians and which has been marketed by Sharon as a necessary evil rather than as a step towards peace.
However, a clear majority - backing for the plan has hovered consistently at around 60 per cent in the opinion polls - came to the realisation that they could not continue to rule over 1.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The majority also realised that having 7,500 Jewish settlers continuing to live among such a large Palestinian population was simply unviable.
They concluded that the cost in human life - both Israeli and Palestinian - and the economic cost of maintaining this settlement project could no longer be tolerated.
It is this group - the silent majority, in many ways - which decided that the time had come for Israel to begin delineating a border with the Palestinians, even if unilaterally for now. They believed that such a move, however traumatic, was essential if they wanted to ensure that Israel remained a Jewish, democratic state and did not slip into an apartheid-like scenario in which a minority of Jews ruled over an Arab majority.
For this group, the withdrawal from Gaza represents the beginning of a return to national sanity and a rejection of the messianic nationalism embodied in the settler movement, which has dominated the political agenda in Israel for more than three decades.
For the religious settler public, the evacuation from Gaza is deeply traumatic. It represents a shattering of their divine vision of a Greater Israel, of their belief that settling the land is an essential ingredient in the process of redemption. It has also shaken their conviction that no government would ever have the political will to remove them from their homes.
It is still too early to predict how the withdrawal will shape the role they play within Israeli society.
After Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s - the first time the government went to war in the absence of a broad national consensus - many secular, dovish Israelis, who inhabited the elite units in the army out of a sense of national mission, lost their motivation to serve. Increasingly, they were replaced by the skullcap-wearing national religious youth, who are now disproportionately represented in the military.
These ultranationalist religious youngsters, traumatised by their government's decision to evacuate settlements - a mission carried out by the army they have come to sanctify - might now turn their backs on the elite units. They might choose to disengage from Israeli society, opting for the cloistered, separatist existence of the black-coated ultra-Orthodox Jews, who run their own education system and religious courts.
But there are also other voices in this camp. There are those who say that the Gaza pullout is the result of the settlers' failure to engage Israeli society and that, in their singular focus on settling the West Bank and Gaza, they failed to "settle" in the hearts of their fellow citizens. To do this, and prevent any further withdrawals, they argue, the time has come to re-engage.
Throughout the last 18 months, since Sharon declared his intention to leave Gaza, the voice of large sections of Israeli society has been inaudible. The opinions of one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who moved to Israel in the 1990s, have rarely been heard on the disengagement issue.
The same goes for the 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel, who have watched events unfold, wondering what their future place will be in a state which defines itself as Jewish and which will become more so - in demographic terms, at least - after the pullout.
In Israel, "day after" speculation has already begun. Will the Palestinian Authority succeed in taking control of Gaza or will Hamas become the dominant force there? Will there be an eruption of violence in the West Bank?
The answers lie very much with Sharon. If he decides that there will not be a withdrawal in the West Bank, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will be weakened and violence will loom.
Sharon has said he is not planning any post-Gaza concessions. But he has changed his mind in the past: when he stood for re-election in 2003, he mockingly dismissed a plan floated by his Labour Party opponent, Amram Mitzna, for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
Domestic politics will play a key role. If Sharon remains head of the Likud - he faces a stiff challenge from his former finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned recently in opposition to the Gaza withdrawal - he will have to adopt a more hardline stance.
Alternatively, if it emerges that he has no chance of leading the Likud, he might try setting up a centrist party, with moderate Likud and Labour members, and run on a platform which includes a withdrawal from part of the West Bank.
But Sharon - or his successor - could also find himself dragged into a West Bank withdrawal, overwhelmed by the sheer momentum he has created in dismantling the Gaza settlements.
He would not be the first leader to be overtaken by events he himself unleashed. After Mikhail Gorbachev announced perestroika in the Soviet Union, he was swept along by the forces he set in motion and ultimately was discarded. In South Africa, F.W. de Klerk, most likely seeking a power-sharing arrangement with black South Africans, released Nelson Mandela and triggered a process which ended white rule altogether.
Could a similar fate befall Sharon?
The Americans will be hoping that it does. They haven't bothered waiting for the end of the Gaza withdrawal to begin applying pressure. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday that the US expected Israel to take further steps. "It cannot be Gaza only," she said.
Israelis, for their part, are no strangers to national trauma. They will digest the dramatic pictures of the Gaza withdrawal quickly, and the debate will soon turn to the future of the West Bank. And, when it does, the battle between the forces of blue and the forces of orange will erupt again.