Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu was with his sons at a football match on Wednesday night when a tearful Ehud Olmert announced he would be stepping down as leader of his Kadima party after months of battling corruption allegations. But his mind may have wandered: for whatever happens next, Netanyahu - once the enfant terrible of Israeli politics and one of its most fascinating and controversial figures - stands to gain.As the implications sink in of Olmert's decision - for Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Middle East - opinion polls show that the leader of the right-wing Likud opposition remains the Israeli public's preferred choice as prime minister. "Bibi is likely to be prime minister after the next elections," predicts the journalist Haim Baram, combining "gut feeling" with decades of writing about Israel's febrile, fragmented political life. And given that this is a part of the world where worst-case scenarios tend to come true, the looming crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions could galvanise squabbling politicians to close ranks and go for a grand national unity coalition: cue Netanyahu.
No wonder his immediate response was to call for early elections - the instinct of a quick-witted politician who seizes on disarray in the enemy camp and senses that his time come. "This government has reached an end and it doesn't matter who heads Kadima. They are all partners in this government's total failure," he declared on Thursday. "If Bibi sees he can precipitate elections, he will," says the political analyst Yossi Alpher. "But it's impossible to predict what's going to happen. There are too many variables."