The government's silence on the circumstances of Thursday's alleged aerial incursion into Syrian airspace is a show of self-confidence. Politically speaking, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak can afford to be complacent, because it seems they stand only to gain from the incident.

Regardless of how they rank in opinion polls, Barak and Olmert are not commenting on the mysterious occurrence. It appears that they favor security considerations over political gains in the media. Over the weekend, they tried to demonstrate their leadership through silence. Only Barak's predecessor, Amir Peretz, couldn't restrain himself and issued a vague statement.

The first and least likely scenario is entanglement and escalation. Even if this occurs, Olmert's critics could scarcely repeat accusations of hasty and hotheaded decision-making, as they alleged after the Second Lebanon War.