At the same time, analysts said, other European leaders share some of the blame for bringing the confrontation with Athens to a head, by insisting on a rigid adherence to institutional rules for Greece, even after showing flexibility for larger countries like France in the past.

And while the no vote left many European officials dumbfounded on Sunday, it may also offer them an opening to climb back from their insistence on rigid austerity terms and to acknowledge that those policies are not a panacea for Europe’s long-running debt crisis.

“What we need now is more wisdom from both sides,” said Loukas Tsoukalis, the president of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, an Athens-based think tank. “Greece can’t go on because we’re on the edge of cliff,” he said. “After all this, the question is whether our partners would be so unwise as to push Greece over the edge, because that would be damaging for everyone.”

Some European officials acknowledged Sunday that greater flexibility might now be needed from their camp. Just as the referendum vote divided Greece, so, too, did it reveal fault lines between those European countries that appear willing to bend to keep Greece in the eurozone, and others, including Germany and the Netherlands, whose policy makers have all but suggested that the eurozone would be better off without Greece.