Having knocked the government of Lionel Jospin for failing to cut taxes enough while he was outside it, Mr Fabius has yet to prove he is politically nimble enough to persuade France's unwieldy left-wing coalition to swallow such reforms.
The right-wing Likud, having tried to swallow what was originally a leftist idea (though Mr Sharon, unlike the left, may have intended the Gaza pullout to be Israel's final withdrawal from occupied territory) was near fission.