So the Knesset has finally decided on early elections, and political parties, old and new, will be preparing for the looming battle.
Among the new parties that may spring up is the long talked-about centrist party, which, supporters believe, could well hold the balance of power after the next elections and may even put up a successful candidate for prime minister.
Whatever way you look at it, however, a centrist party and a third candidate for prime minister will hurt the Labor Party much more than the Likud.
Two likely prime ministerial candidates — Amnon Lipkin Shahak and Dan Meridor — will be supported by middle-class Ashkenazi voters, who traditionally cast their ballots for Labor. An extreme right-wing candidate might affect the re-election chances of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but not to the same extent that either of the three centrist candidates would affect the chances of Labor Party leader Ehud Barak becoming premier.
The real threat to Netanyahu would be an alternative candidate rising from within the Likud, such as Knesset member Uzi Landau or Communications Minister Limor Livnat. But Netanyahu has spent much of the past two years ensuring an almost automatic majority for himself within the party itself.
Shahak, of course, remains the great unknown.
Probably more than any other previous chief of staff, Shahak has become identified with the left, but he is equally aware that he stands to gain most by playing for the center, where the past two national elections were won.
Most people had assumed that Barak would fill the centrist role vacated by the late Yitzhak Rabin. But Barak has not proven to be a successful opposition leader. He has been unable to create a momentum of true opposition to the Netanyahu government, despite its many failings.
Shahak will not, at this stage, challenge Barak for the leadership of the Labor Party — not least because he is not a member of the party. If there is a challenge to Barak from within, it will not take place prior to the elections, although if Barak fails to be elected prime minister, he will probably be removed much more quickly than Labor Party leaders of the past.
Such a challenge is more likely to come from the direction of Labor Knesset member Haim Ramon, rather than Shahak, the former being a dying breed in contemporary Israeli politics — a civilian.
Which raises another issue.
The growing influence of former military leaders in the politics of the state has reached unbearable proportions. The almost automatic assumption that military figures such as Barak, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Mordechai, Avigdor Kahalani and Shahak should automatically take the reins of state following their retirement from active duty raises some serious questions about the nature of Israeli democracy and the way decisions are made.
The emergence of Shahak as a possible candidate for prime minister when no one knows anything about his political views, and when he has had no experience running anything in civilian life, is the latest, and most extreme, example of this unhealthy domination of civilian life by ex-military figures.
It was evidenced again in Leah Rabin’s recent statement that Yitzhak Rabin saw both Barak and Shahak as natural inheritors of his role as warrior turned peacemaker.
But in that statement she also exhibited one of her rare moments of political wisdom, making it crystal clear that a direct confrontation between the two in the forthcoming poll would be the best present Netanyahu could have. It would split the center and left-of-center vote, leaving the door open for Netanyahu to win by default perhaps even in the first round.
There are, of course, still many players who may yet take the field, and other pieces of the political jigsaw puzzle to be put in place.
For those of us who enjoy intrigues and speculations — in other words, those of us who are not yet fed up with national politics, the next few months promise to be interesting indeed.