In the coming days we will begin to see what the Winograd Committee has in mind for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In the meantime, the premier has had an epiphany. This week he said something, though it was still heard only faintly, in praise of the Saudi plan. You needn't be a cynic to be able to interpret this. Ninety-seven percent of the Israeli public has turned its back on him in the public-opinion surveys, or at least don't trust him. Nonetheless, perhaps something has happened to the man, if, a full five complicated years after the Arab summit meeting that first approved the plan, he is suddenly changing his line.

Did someone say "changing?" As usual with Olmert, that's not entirely clear. He has formulated something vague about the "circumstances having changed." Really? This week? Still, those who wanted him to relate seriously to the decision of the Arab summit in Beirut (which was ratified three years ago in Cairo), will not pursue a reckoning with Olmert's barren diplomatic record, now that something has budged even in him.

The circumstances have changed in a big way - that is, they have made the prime minister's situation very much worse. He is liable to be out on his heels like former prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. But for the time being, life goes on. Olmert's begun to see the light? Good for him. He's on the right path? He should only continue.

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The problem for Olmert now is that even if he has taken the Saudi plan to heart, he will have to do a lot more than brandish about a statement to that effect. It has no meat, of course, if he continues to oppose a Palestinian unity government. After all, the main significance of Saudi King Abdullah's summit in Mecca was the agreement of Hamas, though still only implicit, to honor all the agreements to which Fatah committed itself. And Olmert's anachronistic and baseless insistence that the most dynamic element in the territories cannot be a partner to the leadership in the territories effectively cancels out his positive muttering this week about the Saudi plan.

The truth is that it is difficult to understand the prime minister. What damage would be caused to the nation he is trying to lead if he were to act to cancel the boycott of Hamas? We won't have the organization's immediate recognition? Israel's defensive and deterrent capability will be harmed more than they were last summer? Without the essential change in the Israeli position toward Hamas, Olmert will also continue to go nowhere in the matter of the return of the prisoners. Even Bibi Netanyahu has started to change his tune about the Palestinian unity government. And the lower Olmert drops in the public-opinion polls, the greater will be the majority here for a change in direction with respect to such a government.

Therefore, this too is entirely unclear with Olmert: If there are elections, what does he have to offer the street, which has long been fed up with his confused diplomatic game? But the Knesset will do everything it can to survive, and a canny man like Olmert knows that even if he somehow emerges from Winograd unscathed, and without elections, his party is taking in water. Its Knesset members are looking in all directions for a way out before it goes down. Kadima will collapse with a single shove if Olmert does not create a sense of movement in the only matter that still remains in his hands: starting a change in the direction of the conflict, which, in the opinion of his General Staff, is moving toward another war.

At the end of the month, on the anniversary of the two previous Arab summits, another one will be held in Riyadh. If Olmert is fated to exit, what will he leave behind him apart from shattered diplomatic recitations? And in anticipation of the possibility that he stays, what is he doing with regard to those changing circumstances? In either case, in days that are among the worst that any Israeli leadership has known, the time has come to take a good look and see whether a person who came into power by the sheerest chance is capable of moving himself, however much he may be limping. Not for the sake of miserable survival, but for the sake of a courageous change in policy. This is his last chance. And this will also be the difference between what was attributed to his predecessor - the desire to leave behind himself a new page in history - and what is otherwise liable to remain after Ehud Olmert is gone: a skimpy marginal footnote.