As for Bush, he has less room than usual to placate Sharon. He has already given the Israeli leader a nice advance payment, taking considerable Arab heat for his show of support. Even in an election year, he cannot accept a gutted deal in return.

Sharon lost because he didn't take his adversaries seriously -- an unlikely mistake for an old warrior. His opponents ran a very effective campaign against the removal of settlements, extolling the personal sacrifice of the Gaza settlers and trumpeting a "no reward for terrorism" message that appealed to security-minded Likud hard-liners. Leaders of the opposition reached most of Likud's 200,000 members, filled the country with anti-disengagement signs, and recruited rabbis to influence religious voters. Sharon, on the other hand, refrained from active campaigning. He believed, wrongly as it turned out, that support from Bush and massive media presence would suffice to assure him victory. Ten days before the referendum, the polls indicated a possible loss. The tide had obviously turned, but nobody predicted Sharon's landslide defeat (he lost by 20 percent).

These tactical explanations give only part of the picture, however. There are deeper political meanings to the Likud referendum. Sharon is only the latest in a long list of prime ministers who tried to break away from their pre-election pledges and to compromise with the Palestinians or Syria. All met an impassable political block, losing their support base or their job or both. In Israel, as in America and elsewhere, a candidate must appeal to the swing votes in the political center to win an election. In Israel, this means taking a moderate hard line toward the Arabs while expressing a vague willingness to compromise. Once in office, however, the prime minister has to contend with the political reality that many voters are loath to accept significant changes in Israel's position toward its adversaries. To justify proposed compromises, Israel leaders usually cite "the national interest" and relations with the White House, but they inevitably face coalition defections or a rebellion within their own party. These are the "checks and balances" of Israeli democracy: The parliament and party system -- which gives the minority a disproportionate influence -- restrains the prime minister's freedom of action.

It happened to Yitzhak Shamir, after he surrendered to American pressure and went to the Madrid peace conference in late 1991; to Yitzhak Rabin, who tried to trade the Golan for peace with Syria and backed off in 1994; to Netanyahu, after his Wye accord with Yasser Arafat in 1998; and to Ehud Barak, with his failed final-status talks with Arafat in 2000. Like Sharon, Barak harnessed the American president, Bill Clinton, to his grandiose designs, but failed to keep his political support base at home. Barak was able to convince the Israeli and American publics that Arafat was to blame for the failure, thus freeing the Israeli leader from having to deal with the domestic reaction to his possible peace plan. But Sharon proposed a unilateral plan, overlooking the Palestinians, and thus could not blame them for the failure.

From the other side, Sharon's opponents, led by the hard-line ministers Uzi Landau, Natan Sharansky and Yisrael Katz, praise themselves for their political and moral clarity. Landau talks about vague concessions in some future deal, but says that the war against the Palestinians must be won first. In his eyes, anything less will amount to rewarding the terrorists. At the most, Landau is ready to tacitly accept the removal of illegal "settlement outposts": Sharon promised Bush he would remove them long ago but has been reluctant to act.

Sharon made another arrogant mistake: He went to the polls without a backup plan. As a result, he found himself lacking a clear agenda in the first post-referendum days. True to form, Israel's media was filled with trial balloons and outright nonsense, from "mini disengagement" and "gradual implementation" to a highly complicated "regional" deal, in which Egypt would donate land to expand the crowded Gaza Strip, in exchange for a smaller Israeli area, including a tunnel to Jordan. It took Sharon several days to regroup, take control, and declare his adherence to the beaten plan.

Many times through his long military and political career, Sharon has found a way out of devastating trouble, always coming back stronger than before. Once again, Sharon is fighting uphill, seeking the weak spot in the enemy's defenses. Can he repeat the trick one more time? The answer depends on several factors. His adversaries don't want to oust him but merely keep him weakened. They must show some victors' generosity, to allow him some room to maneuver, lest their victory turns out to be Pyrrhic and arouse public anger. After all, most Israelis support the withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu, the key to the Cabinet's support, started his bargaining with Sharon on Sunday with a tough opening position, which he also made public: "one doesn't exchange plans like socks."

The country is also waiting for the attorney general's decision whether to indict Sharon for bribery. Leaks indicate that the case will be closed, which would strengthen Sharon's position, at least until another investigation over illegal campaign money deals is concluded.

In the previous round, which failed, Sharon tried to work from the outside in, first finding the minimum withdrawal that would be acceptable to Washington and then selling it at home. This time, he will have to work from the inside out, hammering out an agreement with his ministers before again calling on the weary Bush. Sharon must once again find a bridge between his party's positions and his strong friendship with Bush. This task is not necessarily impossible, but it has never appeared harder.

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