ISRAEL: Four days before Israel's elections, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is turning into Teflon Man, flying high in the polls despite financial scandals surrounding himself and his Likud party.
His main challenger, Labour opposition leader Mr Amram Mitzna, seems to be steering his party into the political abyss.
Latest polls suggest that Mr Sharon's Likud party will win some 32 seats in the 120-member Knesset in Tuesday's general elections, and that together with other right-wing, Orthodox and immigrant parties it will be able to form a coalition without Labour - should Mr Sharon so wish.
Indeed, the surveys suggest that Labour may win 18 or fewer seats, and could conceivably be overtaken as the second largest party by Shinui, a centrist faction led by a savvy ex-journalist who campaigns against ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers and for tax reform to benefit the middle classes.
The Likud's increasingly robust showing in the pre-election polls reflects the profound Israeli antipathy to Mr Yasser Arafat, whom Mr Sharon will not meet, but with whom Mr Mitzna says he would resume diplomatic contacts.
The Likud is thriving even as allegations and counter-allegations surrounding Mr Sharon's campaign financing continue to make headlines here.
The focus of these reports has shifted, however.
Earlier this month, Mr Sharon was under heavy pressure to provide details of bizarre financial dealings that saw him, or his sons, taking a loan from a South African-based businessman friend in order to repay illegal campaign contributions.
Israeli police are investigating that loan, amid suspicions that it, too, was arranged illegally.
Now, though, the headlines are preoccupied with the process by which news of the police investigation became public - via a leak from a senior lawyer in the state prosecution service.
While Mr Sharon may well have to face the police investigators after polling day, Labour's Mr Mitzna will have his own battles to fight with internal party rivals after the election.
A soft-spoken former general and nine-year mayor of the northern town of Haifa, Mr Mitzna claimed yesterday to be unfazed by the polls, and may draw some hope from the large proportion of the electorate that says it is still wavering over who to support.
But a long line of would-be successors are already gearing up to try and oust him, and Labour, the party of David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin that governed Israel uninterrupted for the first 29 years of statehood, could even collapse into small, irrelevant hawkish and dovish factions.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials yesterday expressed anger that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had despatched his Middle East envoy, Lord Levy, for talks with Palestinian Authority Information Minister Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo and other Palestinian Authority (PA) officials in the West Bank without informing the Israeli government.
Three Israelis were killed in a shooting attack south of the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday, when Palestinians opened fire on a vehicle at the Beit Haggai intersection, near a settlement in the Hebron hills, rescue services said.