When he says yes, what does he mean?

You must be celebrating," the interviewer from a popular radio station told me after Benjamin Netanyahu's speech. "After all, he is accepting the plan which you proposed 42 years ago!" (Actually it was 60 years ago, but who is counting?)

The front page of Haaretz carried an article by Gideon Levy, in which he wrote that "the courageous call of Uri Avnery and his friends four decades ago is now being echoed, though feebly, from end to end [of the Israeli political spectrum]."

I would be lying if I denied feeling a brief glow of satisfaction, but it faded quickly. This was no 'historic' speech, not even a 'great' speech. It was a clever speech.

Netanyahu declared that "our hand is extended for peace".

In my ears, that rang a bell: in the 1956 Sinai war, a member of my editorial staff was attached to the brigade that conquered Sharm Al Shaikh. Since he had grown up in Egypt, he interviewed the senior captured Egyptian officer, a colonel. "Every time David Ben-Gurion announced that his hand was stretched out for peace," the Egyptian told him, "we were put on high alert."

And indeed, that was Ben-Gurion's method. Before every provocation he would declare that "our hands are extended for peace", adding conditions that he knew were totally unacceptable to the other side. Thus an ideal situation (for him) was created: The world saw Israel as a peace-loving country, while the Arabs looked like serial peace-killers.

Last week, Netanyahu wheeled out the same old trick.

I do not underrate, of course, the significance of the chief of the Likud uttering the two words: "Palestinian state". Even if the words "Palestinian state" passed his lips only under duress, and Netanyahu has no intention at all of turning them into reality, it is still a minor victory.

The entire speech was addressed to one single person: Barack Obama. It was not designed to appeal to the Palestinians. It was quite clear that the Palestinians are only the passive object of a discussion between the president of the US and the prime minister of Israel. Except in some tired old clichés, Netanyahu spoke about them, not to them.

He is ready, so he says, to conduct negotiations with the "Palestinian community", and that, of course, "without preconditions". Meaning: without Palestinian preconditions. On Netanyahu's part, there are plenty of preconditions, every one of which is designed to make certain that no Palestinian, no Arab and indeed no Muslim will agree to enter negotiations.

What was not in the speech were the words road map, Annapolis, Palestine, the Arab peace plan, occupation, Palestinian sovereignty, opening of the Gaza Strip border crossings, Golan Heights. So what is more important? The verbal recognition of "a Palestinian state" or the conditions that empty these words of all content?

The public response is interesting. In an opinion poll taken immediately after the speech, 71 per cent supported it, but 55 per cent believed that Netanyahu just "gave in to American pressure", and 70 per cent did not believe that a Palestinian state would really come about during the next few years.

What exactly do the 71 per cent support? The "Palestinian state" solution or the conditions that obstruct its implementation - or both?

Netanyahu and the right-wing hoped that the Palestinians would reject his words outright, thus painting themselves as serial peace refusers, while the Israeli government would be seen as taking the first small but significant step towards peace.

So the main question is: how will Obama react?

The first reaction was minor. A politely positive response.

Obama is not seeking a frontal collision with the Israeli government. It seems that he wants to exert 'soft' pressure, vigorously but quietly. To my mind, that is a wise approach.

The decisive point at this moment is, of course, the matter of the colonies. Will Obama insist on a total freeze of all building activity or not?

Netanyahu hopes to wriggle out of it. He has now found a new gimmick: projects that have already started must be allowed to be finished. One cannot stop them in the middle. The plans have already been approved. The tenants are waiting for their apartments, and they must not be made to suffer. The Supreme Court will not allow a freeze.

If Obama falls for this, he should not be surprised to find out belatedly that these projects include 100,000 new housing units.

This brings us to the most important fact of last week: the colonists did not raise hell after Netanyahu's speech. On the contrary. Here and there some feeble criticism could be heard, but the large and armed colonist population kept remarkably quiet.

Which brings us back to the unforgettable Sherlock Holmes, who explained how he solved one of his mysteries by drawing attention to "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time".

"But the dog did nothing in the night-time!" someone objected.

"That was the curious incident," remarked Holmes.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.