There is much confusion and uncertainty in Israeli politics and amongst the general public. After several years of ossified slumber, the political system suffered a series of jolts in the autumn and early winter – Amir Peretz shocked the nation by taking the leadership of Labor, then Sharon shook everything up by creating an instant party that drew leading politicians away from the Likud and Labor and grabbed a huge lead in the polls. And then the likelihood that Sharon will be leaving the political stage forever threw everything back into turmoil.

This is an incredible moment of political fluidity.

A friend of mine here has for a long time filled a job application sheet for a particular position, only to find himself unable to affix a postage stamp to the envelope, because the job would require him to maintain close contact with an organization whose opinions were far to the right. He recently finally managed to bring himself to ship off the application. “Nobody knows what right or left mean any more,” he told me in explanation.

Over 150 years ago, it used to be said about Prussia that although most countries have armies, in Prussia the army has a country. Over the past thirty or more years in Israel, it seemed as if, in contrast to most countries, which have policy issues with which they must deal, in Israel a policy issue had a country. From the first few days after the shock of Israel’s surprisingly swift victory in the Six Day War settled in, there was only one question that counted in Israeli politics: ‘what to with the territories’. Everything was measured in relation to that question.

If you believed the entire land was promised to the Jewish people and should be filled with Jewish settlements endlessly until the demographic balance was completely altered forever, you were on the right end of the political spectrum. If you believed that Israel should negotiate an accord that would immediately dismantle every last settlement and return the borders to what they had been on June 5, 1967, you were on the otherend of the spectrum. Every other permutation placed you somewhere along a rough line from one pole to the other. Whatever opinions you might have had about, the economy, or social policy, or any other matter, was largely irrelevant.

Doubtless there are individuals in the settlement movement, in Yossi Beilin’s Meretz party, who still insist that the old categories of left and right are as important as ever. But most Israelis, apparently, feel that these distinctions are slipping away. They know we won’t go back to the situation of the seventies, when Israelis flocked every weekend to the Arab markets of Bethlehem and Ramallah, Palestinian labourers worked from morning to night in every Israeli city and hamlet, and even Shimon Peres was a champion of the settlers. Nor will the euphoria of the immediate post-Oslo agreement, when many believed a new Middle East might dawn, return any time soon. The suicide bombers made sure of that.

At the same time, the public approval Sharon maintained after the trauma of last summer’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip indicated that the old dreams of the right are very far from being popular in middle Israel.

The disengagement and the security fence snaking its way through Judea and Samaria have taken on symbolic importance beyond their immediate practical import. About 15 years ago, Yossi Alpher, a strategic analyst, noted that nearly 90% of Israeli settlers lived on about 10% of Judea and Samaria, and rather near to the old Green Line. Whether by design or a step-by-step improvisation, the policy that Sharon has constructed over the past three years has remarkably resembled a practical, 90-10 solution a la the Alpher map. And a large number of Israelis said they would vote for Sharon’s party because they liked it. It is a policy that says, absent a Palestinian partner with whom we can negotiate, we will draw a line – or in this case a security fence – in the sand. The fence will sometimes hug the old border, and sometimes extend out to include 90% of the settlers. We will disengage – meaning remove settlements – from some areas.

There won’t be a comprehensive peace agreement, only conflict containment for a generation. We don’t want to determine the lives of millions of Palestinian Arabs. They won’t work or even visit on our side of the fence. We won’t go there. They can do what they want over there, create a Middle East Switzerland or, as is actually happening now in the Gaza Strip, sink into lawless anarchy. We don’t care. The answer to that old question ‘what will we do with the territories’ is – we’ll ignore them.

The only problem with this is that lots of people on the other side of the fence don’t want to be ignored. Rockets are still being fired from Gaza to Sderot and very near Ashkelon, in Israel. Hamas is mounting a serious campaign for taking over the Palestinian Authority. Huge weapons caches are being smuggled daily along the Egyptian-Palestinian border.

The realignment of political parties and daily political dramas may soon be a luxury that cannot continue forever. Maybe Olmert will be able to hold Kadima together and continue Sharon's plans. But a lot of Israelis are likely to miss the old Ariel Sharon.