Of all the numerous contenders bidding to relieve Mr Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu of the post of Israeli Prime Minister in May's elections, the latest entrant, who came forward yesterday, is surely the most extraordinary.
For out of more than six years of political retirement has stepped Mr Moshe Arens (73), the former Likud foreign and defence minister and the politician who, quite simply, created Mr Netanyahu in the first place.
Dry and direct as ever, Mr Arens, like five other would-be prime ministers before him in recent days, convened a press conference in Tel Aviv yesterday to declare that he, and only he, could unite first his party and then his country. Only he, said Mr Arens, could restore Likud to its former glories, and ensure the return of those of its key figures, including two ex-ministers, Mr Dan Meridor and Mr Beni Begin, who have bolted in the past few weeks.
What Mr Arens did not say was that he was appalled by Mr Netanyahu's performance as prime minister, and thought it critical to Israel that Bibi be prevented from winning a second term. He was pushed hard by reporters to throw some mud. But Mr Arens never had trouble restraining himself. And the truth is, of course, that his very candidacy is the most damning indictment yet of Mr Netanyahu.
In 1992, after Likud's defeat by Labour, his battered party was there for Mr Arens's taking. But he preferred to retire, clearing the way for Mr Netanyahu to seize the leadership and, four years later, to become prime minister.
Mr Arens glowed with fatherly pride at the success of his creation, for it had been he who had lifted the young Mr Netanyahu from obscurity (working as a furniture salesman) and appointed him as his deputy when he served as Israel's ambassador to Washington in 1982; he who secured the rising star's subsequent appointment as Israel's envoy to the UN; and he who again gave him a deputy's post when he was appointed foreign minister in 1988.
It was Mr Arens, too, who campaigned tirelessly among Israeli Arab voters in 1996, securing an estimated 20,000 votes for Mr Netanyahu; a critical boost, given that the entire margin of victory was less than 30,000 votes.
The analytical ex-aeronautical engineer said he sought no post in Mr Netanyahu's government and got none. But yesterday's declaration of full-scale political rivalry marks the full severance of master and pupil.
Mr Netanyahu, buoyed in recent days by a mild improvement in his polling numbers and by half-hearted pledges of loyalty from some top Likud figures, took the news of Mr Arens's candidacy in forced good form, declaring that everyone in the party had the democratic right to oppose him, but expressing confidence he'd be confirmed first as Likud leader and then, on election day, May 17th, as prime minister.
He is almost certainly correct in the first of those assertions, but the fact that so close an ally as Mr Arens has now so clearly lost faith in him may damage Mr Netanyahu badly among the wider electorate.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Labour Party leader, Mr Shimon Peres, yesterday addressed the Palestinian Legislative Council, at a session in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Mr Peres, who has gathered an international delegation of statesmen, including Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr F.W. de Klerk, Dr Henry Kissinger and Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the annual meeting of his Peres Centre for Peace, urged the Palestinians not to unilaterally declare statehood on May 4th, but rather to wait for a negotiated accord on independence.