Yoel Marcus

Israel's organized-crime families, with their territories, rivalries and settling of accounts, make a laughingstock of the police and law-enforcement authorities.

Barak proves every day that he is part of the problem. As the stock market crashes and the banks collapse, the fall of the generals makes the loudest noise of all.

Personally, I am not joining the Olmert bashers, because the things he is saying are important and need to be said. His words, which are being recorded by our Arab neighbors, and which are seeping into the consciousness of the new U.S. administration, are perceived as Israel's policy and aspiration.

For the moment, at least, Netanyahu, the man everyone thought was as dead as a doornail, is laughing all the way to the polls.

By coincidence, 20 days after Obama enters the White House we will be electing a new prime minister. Preferring Tsipi Livni to the right-wing Bibi-Begin government in the February general election will say yes to change, here too.

One of the first things that Livni must do, for example, is to grant Shaul Mofaz senior status in Kadima, both as a counterweight to Shas' tendency to raise the 'ethnic demon' and as a counterbalance to Defense Minister Barak.

Tzipi Livni has shown that she acts according to her own conscience, and that she speaks from her heart.

Ever since its establishment in 1984, Shas has held on to 10 percent of the voters. It is not a party that is going to disappear if it isn?t given what it wants right now. They will wait patiently for the narrow government headed by Livni to fall, and Bibi will embrace them to his bosom.

A government has yet to be established and a duel between the two generals - an incumbent defense minister and an ex-defense minister - is taking shape.

Both candidates want the Jewish vote, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict won't top their list.

Tzipi Livni, who has been charged with forming and leading a new government, embodies the antithesis of the long-standing belief that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is impossible.

At the moment, there is no reason in the world why Israel should find itself in either of these predicaments, let alone both - dawdling for months over forming a new government or being dragged into early elections.

You can call Tzipi Livni in the middle of the night or at 10 in the morning. It makes no difference, because her defense philosophy, she says, is not based on military hocus-pocus. Israel's defense problems cannot be resolved through armed intervention alone.

Our inability to free Shalit is a kind of impotence that we haven't seen around here since the disappearance of Israeli navigator Ron Arad.

The surveys held ahead of an Israeli party primary reflect the views of a very small segment of the population, and most of them are orchestrated by party hacks.

An emergency government cancels out the rules of the democratic game, which is built on the principle of a coalition and an opposition.

Israel needs to exercise greater caution, and above all, to stop being so cocksure that America will stand by us, come what may.

With Kadima in internal chaos, this is the ideal time for Labor to make a comeback as the leading party. Why is this not happening? Because of Barak?s inability to cooperate with anyone else.

As the date of the Kadima primary gets closer, the two chief contenders are raising the bar in the competition between them.