ALMOST two decades ago, as an impoverished immigrant studying international relations at the Hebrew University, Mr Avigdor Lieberman used to scrape a living with a bit of part time employment as a bouncer at the university disco and a security guard at the Prime Minister's office.
Today, he works in the heart of the Prime Minister's office. Indeed, as its director general and the aide closest to the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, he is arguably the second most important man in Israel.
But his large, imposing build still triggers memories of those student jobs.
And as Mr Lieberman now finds himself fighting for his political future, and quite possibly his boss's as well, the question is whether he has been living up too literally to his hard man reputation - playing power politics with a tad too little subtlety.
An incongruously soft spoken man with a light beard and a heavy Russian accent, Mr Lieberman is under attack on three fronts.
A disgruntled former colleague in Mr Netanyahu's office, Mr Pinhas Fishler, is claiming that Mr Lieberman conned him into resigning by telling him, falsely, that he had failed a routine personal security check.
More seriously, Mr Lieberman is under police investigation for allegedly falsifying a report concerning the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
And, most importantly, his name has been linked to the political scandal with which this country is currently obsessed the alleged illegal conspiracy that led to the short lived appointment earlier this month as attorney general of Mr Ronnie Bar On.
Mr Lieberman has not been directly implicated in the gravest aspect of that scandal - the claim that Mr Bar On had agreed, once in office, to arrange a plea bargain for a leading Knesset member, Mr Aryeh Deri, who is in the midst of a corruption scandal.
But he is a very close friend of Mr Deri's and of the man who allegedly brokered the illegal plea bargain deal, Mr David Appel. What is more, Mr Deri has admitted contacting Mr Lieberman over the attorney general appointment.
Although it has been reported that, during his university days, Mr Lieberman was involved in more than one ugly contretemps with Arab students, he has more recently earned a reputation for calm under pressure. But in the last few days there have been distinct signs of strain.
Most dramatically, Mr Lieberman gave a TV interview on Wednesday night in which he charged that Israel's police force was being used as a political tool "for the settling of scores." That outburst triggered opposition demands for his resignation, and accusations of incitement.
In a rather Soviet style effort to support their man, hundreds of Mr Lieberman's friends held a public gathering in Tel Aviv yesterday.
At the last minute, Mr Lieberman asked the organisers not to use his name on their banners, so the conference instead chose to describe itself as a rally of "anti media activists" - the local media being routinely blamed by Mr Netanyahu, Mr Lieberman and their supporters for most of their ills.
Mr Netanyahu is understood to have been somewhat discomfited by his top aide's attack on the police, but has not come out publicly against him. Mr Lieberman, after all, has accompanied him throughout his meteoric rise to the premiership and, for now, Mr Netanyahu is standing by his man.
But if the Bar On scandal, which is being seen here as Mr Netanyahu's potential "Watergate", begins seriously to threaten his position, the Prime Minister may be tempted to ditch him - just as Nixon, in his final, desperate efforts to hold on to power, ditched his two top aides, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.
Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Lieberman. It does have a certain ring to it.
Reuter reports from Jerusalem:
Jumping over walls and trekking across muddy fields, hundreds of Palestinians defied an Israeli ban on entry to Jerusalem to attend Friday prayers at alAqsa mosque in the holy month of Ramadan, witnesses said.
Minor scuffles broke out as Israeli soldiers tried to hold back the Palestinians, who jammed military checkpoints around Jerusalem. More than 3,000 policemen were deployed to deal with them.
Israel Radio estimated 200,000 people attended the prayers.
In the West Bank town of Hebron, scuffles broke out between Israeli soldiers and Muslim worshippers at the gates of alIbrahimi mosque, the burial place of Abraham, where thousands of Palestinians tried to attend Friday prayers, witnesses said.
For almost three years, Israel has barred Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from entering the holy city without special permits, in an attempt to stem Arab Israeli violence.
Some 200,000 Palestinians entered Jerusalem every day before the closure for worship, medical treatment or work.