Electrified by the return to politics of the former prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's parliament may begin voting as soon as tomorrow on legislation that could enable him to try and get his old job back.
Utterly nonplussed by Mr Netanyahu's intended comeback, meanwhile, the Palestinians are looking to a US-led commission of inquiry, which arrived here yesterday under the leadership of the former Northern Ireland mediator, Mr George Mitchell, to try and help put an end to the violence that is still flaring in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli politics is in a state of flux following the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday afternoon, and Mr Netanyahu's declaration hours later that he intended to try and block Mr Barak's re-election.
Mr Barak's original intention had been to hold elections only for the position of prime minister, in which only current Knesset members would be eligible to submit their candidacy - a move apparently designed to keep Mr Netanyahu, who gave up his parliamentary seat last year, sidelined.
But moves are now afoot in parliament to pave the legal way for a Netanyahu candidacy, along one of two avenues. The ultra-Orthodox Shas party, now firmly in the Netanyahu camp, is pushing legislation that would enable him to run for prime minister from outside the House.
Mr Barak has even been embarrassed into indicating support for such a move. Failing that, a constellation of forces is gathering to press for full-scale general elections, in which all Knesset seats would be up for grabs, and Mr Netanyahu, like any other Israeli, would be free to campaign for both the leadership of his Likud party and the prime minister's job.
An opinion poll yesterday showed Mr Netanyahu a staggering 20 per cent ahead of Mr Barak, whose cause has not been helped by his recent political machinations. Mr Netanyahu has called these moves "the most cynical trick in the history of the state", and even some of the prime minister's own colleagues now say that it would be wrong to deny the public the right to vote for the candidate of their choice. Predictions are dangerous in Israel's volatile political reality, but most analysts believe a way will be found for Mr Netanyahu to compete.
Among Palestinian leaders, the collapse of Mr Barak's government is a cause for concern, but the Palestinian Authority cabinet secretary, Mr Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, has been asserting that "no Israeli prime minister" - and that presumably includes Mr Netanyahu - "could be worse than Barak". While Mr Barak sees himself as the Israeli leader who offered the Palestinians the best-ever terms for a peace deal, the Palestinian leadership holds him publicly responsible for the deaths of more than 270 Palestinians, among the 300-plus casualties of the past 10 weeks of fighting.
Two more Palestinians died yesterday. One of them, Mr Nawar Hamran, an activist from the militant Islamic Jihad movement, was shot dead outside Nablus.
The Palestinians are looking to the Mitchell inquiry, which includes representatives from the EU, Norway and Turkey and which held its opening meetings with both sides yesterday, to intervene to stop the violence. Mr Mitchell, a former Democratic Senator, said the aim was both to help reduce "the level of violence" and "to help ensure an early return to the negotiating table".