The Israeli prime minister's surprise decision to call spring elections, rather than wait until he was forced to do so, has given new urgency to the pursuit of peace with the Palestinians. Ehud Barak's best chance of being re-elected is to confront the voters with the draft of a ready-made agreement. Even in good circumstances this would be extraordinarily difficult, as the failure at Camp David this summer showed. Now, after two months of Palestinian violence and Israeli retaliation, it may be near-impossible. But if Mr Barak, or a Labour rival, goes down, to be succeeded by a hardline opposition leader, the Middle East's lights could go out, for a time. Both sides need an energetic push from outside to make the leap to sanity. In the end, only direct negotiation between their leaders can induce the two peoples to share their patch of land peacefully, and so allow the rest of the world to relax. But they probably still need to be escorted to that point.
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