Gershom Gorenberg is an American-born writer who has lived in Israel for 25 years. He is associate editor of the Jerusalem Report and author of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount.

"Why aren't you in Baghdad?" someone asked a journalist colleague in the tree-shaded courtyard off Jaffa Road. A sometimes-source in the prime minister's office was standing next to the table with the wine, and we gabbed about the adjustment problems of ex-spooks who go into politics and have to learn how to stand out after years of doing the opposite. Natan Sharansky, who has managed to get a mostly ceremonial ministerial post after his Russian immigrant party flopped in the last election, was whispering into his cell phone under his bodyguard's watchful eyes. In Jerusalem, an undersized, claustrophobic capital, I can't get away from politics even at a bat mitzvah party.

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No one, of course, had a gas mask, even Sharansky, despite Ariel Sharon's reported instructions to Cabinet ministers to serve as a good example. Yesterday Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz met with the brass about lowering the level of national alert and decided not to. Officially, we should all being carrying our masks. A news report suggested that the decision was based on American info that the danger of attack still exists. Or is the United States sheepish about giving us the all-clear, given the questions that the occasional newsperson asks about the casus belli? Even if chemical and biological weapons are found in the basement tomorrow, it could be slightly disconcerting to admit that Saddam has fallen without using them. When the alert ends, the army here will also face questions about whether we really needed to take our masks out: Now that the filters have been unplugged, they will have to be replaced, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. By the war's second day, midlevel officers were complaining off the record that the top brass had exaggerated the danger and wasted a fortune.

A couple of friends munched olives and talked about the American-backed Shiite imam who returned to Najaf and immediately got murdered in the holy city's main mosque. The Ha'aretz report today said the brawl in which he died began with verbal attacks by backers of a pro-Iranian Shiite group.

We picked at the story, trying to figure out what will happen next. In my files, I remarked, I have a magazine article from the end of the first Gulf War, listing the winners and losers: "It had Bush as a winner, and Yitzhak Shamir. Arafat and King Hussein were losers, because they backed Saddam." We laughed. The war had shuffled the deck and dealt a new hand, and the beginning of a hand is the wrong time to name who has won. A couple of years later, Daddy Bush and Shamir had both been defeated, and Arafat and King Hussein were signing treaties with Yitzhak Rabin under the happy sponsorship of Bill Clinton.

So, now the new Bush has shuffled the deck again and dealt the cards and play begins. "Iran's in the game, and the Kurds, and Syria, and us, and the Palestinians. Anyone want to place bets?" I asked. No one did, which was fine, I didn't want to give odds. The Najaf story sounds, for an Israeli, like an allusion to what happened after Israel conquered South Lebanon in 1982: Soon the Shiite Hezbollah was engaged in guerrilla war, using Iranian guns and suicide attacks. As for the north of Iraq, I have a number in my phonebook of an Israeli ex-general who was allegedly there years ago, advising the Iraqi Kurds in a rebellion against Baghdad. Whenever I call him to ask him questions about it, he forgets that he has gone into politics and that he's supposed to make glib predictions.

I came home and got back to work on cleaning for Passover. Over the patio door is a metal box that holds a roll-down shutter, and once a year I remember to dust up there. I wanted my son to hold the ladder, but he's asthmatic and the last thing he needs is a year of dust drifting down on him. My wife had a brainstorm: "Get out your gas mask," she said. He dug around his room, found the cardboard box, and after three tries got the mask over his face. He looked like a black grasshopper. I climbed up and dusted and he held the ladder, breathing easily. I've done my patriotic duty: Taking out the masks was not in vain.

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