There is nothing more dishonorable than a soldier who deserts his unit during a war. There is nothing more cowardly and despicable than a soldier who runs off and abandons his comrades on the battlefield to save his own skin.

How selfish, spineless and ugly of the Yisrael Beiteinu party to quit the coalition while a bloody battle is underway in Gaza. How egotistical of its chairman, Avigdor Lieberman, to choose the worst possible moment to shirk his government responsibility.

What will the weary residents of Sderot who hunker down and refuse to leave their homes despite the daily shelling say? What will the soldiers going out on dangerous missions say when the minister for strategic affairs renounces his duties in favor of narrow political interests?

I don't know exactly what Lieberman's job was in the government, apart from his frequent trips to Russia. They say he was involved in matters that can't be talked about. Fine. So is the Iran problem solved already, that he can walk out on the coalition and set himself up in the opposition?

In the meantime, this government, with Bush or without, with Annapolis or without, has not dismantled a single unauthorized outpost, divided Jerusalem or said yes to the Palestinian right of return. So what was his reason for leaving?

Maybe Lieberman's calculations are based on the egocentric assumption that he might not be on the right side of the fence if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert goes. Basically, he belongs to the far right, somewhere near Benjamin Netanyahu or perhaps even further right. He wants to be in a good place in the middle if there are early elections. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that somewhere in the background lurks a fear of Arcadi Gaydamak, who started out as a curiosity but has morphed into a wily politician liable to take a chunk out of Lieberman's electorate.

Lieberman's walkout may not be as smart as he thinks. Unintentionally, he is challenging the government to get started on the to-do list drawn up with President George W. Bush, and at the top of the list is dismantling illegal outposts, even by force if need be.

If Lieberman thought his leaving would spur Labor Party leader Ehud Barak to break up the coalition, precipitating early elections, he was wrong. Lieberman's exodus will have no effect on Barak. To refresh your memory, Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz quit the government when Lieberman joined it. Now Lieberman has given Barak a ladder to climb down from his tree of promises about Labor quitting for the sake of early elections.

Barak, who already lost an election once by half a million votes, doesn't sneer at public opinion polls. They say that Netanyahu is leading with 40 percent, followed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni with 22 percent, and then Defense Minister Barak with 16 percent. It is unlikely that Barak will want the elections brought forward if he is not sure he will win. And at the moment, he isn't winning.

If the Winograd Committee doesn't say anything that prompts Olmert's dismissal, and the attorney general doesn't drop a new bombshell about his being involved in some incident still under investigation, Olmert will carry on as prime minister and stick to a policy that might be summed up as "marching in the direction of dialogue and an accord with the Palestinian Authority."

Some people are saying that Meretz should be brought into the coalition. A bad idea: It smacks too much of a partnership with an unloved party. In any case, the problem at the moment is not who will win the elections, but how many hands in the Knesset will go up for the government, and how will the government get itself out of the war of attrition in Gaza.

Barak is in no hurry for elections. He needs at least another year in the defense ministry. If anyone complains about him breaking his promise to quit the government, he can trot out Ariel Sharon's old maxim about "things you see from here, you can't see from there." At the moment, according to his associates, he is saying "I'm not in love with my promises, but it would be irresponsible of me to wind up my involvement in defense right now."

In Gaza, the mode of operation he has chosen is showing some sporadic signs of success. Over the next three months, we will have to live with the current military reality. But Barak has also been quoted as saying that he hopes to find a solution to the Gaza problem. Whatever happens, he will not drag the country into a "major campaign" unless the objectives are determined in advance and the army knows how to get out of it.

Now the problem is more the Palestinians' than Israel's. We need to give them some glimmer of hope. We need to start talking about the core issues that we settled on with Bush. Unauthorized outposts must be removed, forcibly if necessary, and the dark forces of the ultra-right must be neutralized. We need to give Lieberman the deserter a reason to eat his hat.