WHAT a wonderful week it has been for Mr Ehud Barak, the opposition Labour Party leader and main candidate to oust Mr Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's Prime Minister in May's elections.
Mr Barak has signed a new alliance with a leading former Netanyahu ally; he's forged a partner ship with a respected Orthodox political faction, and he's finally been cleared of involvement in a horrific military training accident.
However, the latest opinion polls show him either only slightly ahead of, or even with, Mr Netanyahu. Two months before polling day, Mr Barak is somehow still failing to convince the electorate that he'd do a better job.
On Sunday, he sealed a deal with Mr David Levy, which sees Mr Netanyahu's former foreign minister catapulted to the top of the Labour Knesset list and guaranteed a top ministerial position should Mr Barak form the next coalition.
It is hard to gauge exactly how much electoral backing the Moroccan-born Mr Levy brings with him, but he is a political veteran, and has striven down the years to paint himself as the champion of the working-class Sephardi community - a community where Mr Barak needs to eat into Mr Netanyahu's support.
On Monday, Mr Barak reached out to another electoral sector where Mr Netanyahu enjoys an overwhelming advantage - the Orthodox. Labour entered a union with Meimad, the country's only moderate Orthodox faction, whose leaders invoke Jewish spiritual law to demand territorial compromise with the Palestinians, in marked contrast to the many other Orthodox politicians.
Out on the campaign trail with Mr Levy in midweek, Mr Barak got a further lift. Seven years ago, while he was chief of staff of the Israeli army, five soldiers were killed when a training exercise went awry.
A subsequent newspaper expose - denied by Mr Barak - charged that he failed to offer medical assistance to the wounded, and fled the scene in his private helicopter. This week, a probe by the State Comptroller, though not yet officially released, was said to entirely clear Mr Barak's name.
And yet, Mr Barak cannot pull clear of Mr Netanyahu. Worse still for the Labour leader, there's a centrist candidate, the former defence minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, hoping to eclipse him as the main prime ministerial challenger.
A Gallup poll published by Ma'ariv yesterday showed Mr Barak and Mr Netanyahu evenly balanced on 43 per cent each. But were Mr Barak to quit the race and endorse Mr Mordechai, it showed the centrist candidate would defeat the incumbent prime minister by 11 per cent, 46 to 35.