The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, with yesterday's opinion polls showing him a devastating 16 to 22 per cent behind his hardline Likud challenger, Gen Ariel Sharon, is again coming under pressure from within his party to pull out of next Tuesday's prime ministerial elections and let the former prime minister, Mr Shimon Peres, run instead.
The deadline for such a dramatic change is tomorrow noon. Mr Barak has publicly dismissed the notion of giving way to Mr Peres, who has been running neck-and-neck with Gen Sharon in the polls.
Instead, in a high-risk effort to resurrect his chances, Mr Barak may yet hold a summit meeting with the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat - perhaps on Sunday or Monday in Egypt - in the hope of reaching some kind of framework peace accord on the basis of last week's negotiations at the Egyptian resort of Taba.
Earlier this week Mr Barak ruled out such a meeting, in protest against the harsh anti-Israeli speech that Mr Arafat delivered at the Davos international economic summit. But he may feel now that he has nothing to lose, and just might have something to gain: leaked reports of the Taba talks suggest that much progress was made, including a radical proposal for Palestinian refugees to be settled on a small area of land in the Israeli Negev Desert, at Halutza, which would be handed over to the Palestinians in exchange for Israeli sovereignty over three Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank.
Such progress, however, seems to have come too late to prevent a victory by Gen Sharon, who has said he will transfer no further West Bank territory to the Palestinians, and who adamantly rules out the idea of the kind of Halutza "land swap" discussed at Taba.
Mr Peres, who has indicated that he would be delighted to step in for Mr Barak, is being boosted in the polls by the "Israeli Arab factor". Were he to step in as the moderate candidate, many in the million-strong Arab community could be expected to vote for him.
Israeli helicopters meanwhile yesterday sprayed the disputed Shebaa Farms area near the border with Lebanon with gunfire. A Reuters reporter in the town of Kfar Shouba, in Lebanon, saw the helicopters hovering above the area and heard explosions. The Israeli army later said troops in the area had seen "something suspicious but it was found to be nothing".
The shooting came four days after Lebanon's Hizbullah guerrilla group said it was ready to kidnap more Israelis unless Mr Barak agreed to exchange Arab detainees for four Israeli captives it had seized in August in a cross-border ambush and an army post.