Israel's Iraqi-born Minister of Defence, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, took over yesterday as the head of the Labour Party - making history by becoming the first politician of Middle Eastern, rather than European, heritage to lead a major party.
But news that Mr Ben-Eliezer's appointment had finally been ratified, after a revote and months of argument, was overshadowed by news of an appointment that was cancelled: Israel's Supreme Court yesterday prevented Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from naming a controversial former member of the Shin Bet internal security service to serve as his chief adviser on counter-terrorism.
Mr Sharon had attempted to appoint Ehud Yatom, a silver-haired Shin Bet veteran, to head his counter-terror staff back in the summer. But opposition politicians appealed to the Supreme Court to thwart the move, and the judges yesterday ruled in their favour.
Mr Yatom, whose brother Danny is a former head of the Mossad external security apparatus, was deemed unfit to hold the key adviser's post because of his role in one of the most infamous incidents in Shin Bet history, the "Bus 300 Affair": On April 13, 1984, four Palestinians hijacked a bus travelling south from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon.
When Israeli commandos stormed the bus, two of the hijackers and an Israeli woman soldier were killed.
The two other hijackers, who were filmed being taken alive off the bus, were subsequently killed in cold blood by a Shin Bet unit headed by Mr Yatom. The Shin Bet attempted to cover-up the killings and to pin the blame elsewhere. All those involved were subsequently given presidential pardons, and Mr Yatom eventually acknowledged his direct role in the killings in a newspaper interview.
Noting that Mr Yatom had obeyed a "blatantly illegal" order from his superiors to kill the two Palestinians, and that he had participated in the subsequent cover-up, the Supreme Court yesterday barred him from the counter-terror post, and Mr Sharon said he respected the court's decision.
Not so, Mr Yatom. Implying that the judges were motivated by a left-wing bias, he said the decision constituted a "heavy blow to all the security forces" and vowed now to seek political office as a candidate for Mr Sharon's Likud Party. "It's not just my loss. It is a loss for the whole state of Israel," he said.
But Yossi Sarid, the opposition Meretz leader who led the successful petition to the court, said Mr Yatom had been guilty of "monstrous" behaviour, and that by barring him, the court had bolstered the moral guidelines under which the security forces operated.
Although his success contrasted sharply with Mr Yatom's disappointment, the victory of Mr Ben-Eliezer in the Labour leadership vote was not an entirely happy occasion either.
Avraham Burg, who was narrowly defeated in the race, vowed to challenge Mr Ben-Eliezer for the post again, as soon as the political timetable provided an opening.
Still, Mr Ben-Eliezer did get public support from Labour's indefatigable figurehead, the Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and from the former Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak. And Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak telephoned his congratulations.
Labour, under various names, governed Israel for the first 30 years of statehood, but has been in decline in the past two decades. Although it won 26 of the 120 seats in parliament in the 1999 elections, leaving it still the largest party in the Knesset, polls today predict a fall to some 18 seats, with Mr Sharon's Likud taking much of its support.
Mr Ben-Eliezer will now have to decide if and when to lead Labour out of its junior-partner role in Mr Sharon's "unity government" and will have to develop a political alternative to the Likud's highly-sceptical attitude to peace making with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.