Can a Fallen Government Come Apart?

Israelis sometimes joke that if there were only two Israelis, there would be three Israeli political parties. At the moment, Ehud Olmert's caretaker government, which technically fell last year and is now just serving ad interim until Netanyahu forms a government, is managing to come apart in a feud between Olmert and outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak over Olmert's firing of General Amos Gilad, a Barak ally who was the chief negotiator on Gaza and who criticized Olmert for unnecessarily insulting Egypt.

Olmert seems to have had valid reasons for the firing, but this probably puts a prisoner exchange deal on hold for at least the moment, which means a ceasefire is also still on hold, which means that (depending on how long Netanyahu takes) the whole process might have to be revisited. It seems like another case of one-step-forward, two-steps-back.

UPDATE: One of the two people replacing Gilad as negotiator is Yuval Diskin, the head of Shin Bet (General Security Service, the internal security agency). Maybe I'm bring pessimistic (there have been worse Shin Bet heads than Diskin, for certain), but I'm not sure that's going to facilitate things for a lame duck government.