The rash of would-be Israeli prime ministers is spreading by the day, with Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's claim to the top job now being contested by no fewer than six pretenders, and three more waiting in the wings.
In advance of elections set for next May 17th, the latest would-be national saviour to launch a personal appeal to the Israeli electorate was yet another former general, Mr Rafael Eitan.
He has served as a deputy prime minister in Mr Netanyahu's cabinet, and heads a marginal rightwing coalition faction called Tsomet. Mr Eitan is best remembered as the chief-of-staff who led the misguided Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and his prime ministerial candidacy is likely to be similarly unsuccessful.
Mr Eitan now joins the Labour leader, Mr Ehud Barak, and the centrist candidate, Mr Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, in the ranks of ex-generals battling to defeat Mr Netanyahu. The other candidates announced so far are two ex-Likud ministers, Mr Dan Meridor and Mr Beni Begin, and a Likud Knesset member, Mr Uzi Landau.
Mr Eitan's former boss, Mr Ariel Sharon, another ex-general who was minister of defence at the time of the Lebanon War, is also hinting that he may throw his beret into the ring just days after declaring that he was standing by Mr Netanyahu.
Bucking the trend, another potential contender, Mr David Levy, once Mr Netanyahu's minister of foreign affairs, looks set to pass up the prime ministerial race.
On Tuesday he seemed ready to ally himself with Mr Barak; provided, that was, that Labour offered him a guaranteed top job if it formed the next government, and ensured Knesset seats for several of his political buddies as well. But Mr Levy was backtracking yesterday, and insisting he wasn't even negotiating with Labour.
Mr Netanyahu, meanwhile, seems to be lurching ever further to the political right. Having frozen the Wye peace deal with the Palestinians, he has now asked a leading settler spokesman, Mr Aharon Domb, to head his election campaign. Mr Domb is considering the offer.
President Ezer Weizman, who is reputed to loathe Mr Netanyahu, is said to have urged Messrs Barak and Lipkin-Shahak to join forces to oust him, a suggestion clearly beyond the mandate of the supposedly ceremonial state President.
However, it is a position which much of moderate and left-wing Israel, fearful that Mr Barak and Mr Shahak will waste their energies fighting each other, would endorse.