While the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, plans to appeal to the Supreme Court to block a police investigation into alleged illegalities in his campaign financing, right-wing opposition parties are planning a Supreme Court appeal of their own: to cancel the elections that brought Mr Barak to power last year and order a new vote.
The police yesterday formally started their investigation into allegations that Mr Barak's party activists channelled $1.3 million of unlawfully raised funds into the campaign chest - allegations that were detailed in a report on election financing issued last week by the State Comptroller, Justice Elizer Goldberg, a retired Supreme Court justice.
The Attorney General, Mr Eliyakim Rubinstein, yesterday handed police investigators the documents on the alleged illegal financing.
Justice Goldberg asserted that Mr Barak's fundraisers had "trampled all over the law" on election financing.
In his initial response last Thursday, Mr Barak asserted, somewhat unconvincingly, that he had been unaware of the specifics of fundraising. In interviews yesterday, he changed tack, acknowledging that he bore responsibility for his campaign, but insisting that no laws had been broken.
At the root of this claim, which Mr Barak's lawyers will spell out in their Supreme Court appeal, is the assertion that long-established regulations that limit donations to political parties were not updated when Israel changed its electoral system in 1996, and instituted a separate vote to elect the prime minister directly.
"To the best of my knowledge," Mr Barak said yesterday, "the law on party funding does not apply" to the prime ministerial campaign. Bolstering this argument is the fact that Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, who was elected prime minister in 1996, used a campaign finance structure similar to that employed by Mr Barak, and did not face criminal investigation.
But Justice Goldberg rejected this defence in his report, and has already fined Mr Barak's One Israel party $3.2 million for breaching the law. Mr Michael Kleiner, a Knesset member from the right-wing Herut party, yesterday called for the annulment of last year's elections, since "they were unfair and unequal; some of the votes that brought Barak to power were bought".
A formal appeal to the Supreme Court is now being planned along these lines.
Mr Yehuda Wilk, the police commander who yesterday began appointing a team of investigators to handle the case, described it as one of the widest investigations his force ever had to handle. Asked whether its scope would extend beyond the findings in the new State Comptroller's report, to include the suggestion that Mr Netanyahu's 1996 victory might also have been achieved with illegally raised funds, the police chief said that the inquiry would be as wide-ranging as necessary.
Speaking in Cairo at a joint press conference with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Mr Barak insisted that the inquiry would not undermine his efforts to reach peace agreements with both Syria and the Palestinians. Mr Mubarak chipped in with words of support too, declaring that there was no reason for such "internal matters" to affect the diplomatic process.
And indeed, Israel and the Palestinians yesterday began newly intensified negotiations, set to continue for the next two weeks, which are designed to achieve the seemingly impossible: meeting the February 13th deadline for a "framework" accord - the outline of a permanent peace treaty. Whatever Mr Barak, Mr Mubarak and other regional players would like to believe, however, the campaign finance affair is bound to impact on peacemaking.
Hizbullah guerrillas assassinated the second-in-command of the pro-Israeli militia in south Lebanon yesterday, provoking Israeli criticism of Syria and vows of revenge. The killing of Col Akl Hashem with a bomb was announced first by Hizbullah and then confirmed by South Lebanon Army (SLA) radio.
Israeli helicopters later fired missiles at a Hizbullah guerrilla stronghold, police said.
In Cairo, Mr Barak had vowed to punish Col Hashem's killers. Hizbullah supporters celebrated the assassination by handing out sweets to passers-by on Beirut and south Lebanon roads.