London: Is history about to repeat itself? In June 1982, Abu Nidal's Palestinian terror group attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador to London, as he left a diplomatic function at the Dorchester Hotel.
Israel responded by bombing PLO bases in southern Lebanon. The PLO retaliated by firing a barrage of shells and mortars into northern Israel, provoking Ariel Sharon, the then Israeli defence minister, to invade southern Lebanon, which would ultimately cost more than 1,000 Israeli lives and thousands more Arab fatalities.
Fast forward to July 2006, and a familiar and highly toxic pattern is repeating itself on the battle-scarred littoral of the eastern Mediterranean.
The PLO has been replaced by Hezbollah as Israel's antagonist in southern Lebanon, and the inexperienced Ehud Olmert, who replaced Ariel Sharon as Israel's prime minister last March, is overseeing Israel's uncompromising military response to the abduction of two of its soldiers last week on Israel's northern border.
But relatively minor incidents, whether a failed assassination attempt or a successful kidnap plot, have an unerring ability to escalate at an alarming rate whenever Israel's security is directly challenged.
And while, for the moment, at least, the Israelis seem content to rely on their overwhelming air supremacy to exact revenge for Hezbollah's audacious attack, there remains every possibility that the current crisis could result in Israeli troops launching yet another invasion of its Arab neighbours.
The only obstacle to such an alarming development is the American President, and he is resolutely against any suggestion that Washington should rein in its key Middle Eastern ally.
Just how far Israel is prepared to go in its attempts to rescue its two missing soldiers and punish Hezbollah is a decision that ultimately rests with Olmert, the Israeli prime minister who is still struggling to shake off the shadow of his illustrious predecessor.
It is not just that Olmert's military career was limited to occasional stints as a reporter for the Israeli army's in-house magazine. Olmert is also a backroom, career politician who has risen almost without trace.
By his own admission, Olmert owes his election victory to his close association with Sharon before he was incapacitated by a stroke, but his role then was very much acting as the old general's aide-de-camp, a position that does not normally lead to immediate promotion to commander-in-chief.
Olmert would be the first to admit that he only became prime minister because he was seen as the candidate most likely to implement Sharon's plan to complete Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 Six Day War.
Israelis have mixed feelings about withdrawing their soldiers from any conquered territory, whether it is the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza or southern Lebanon.
The abduction of their soldiers in Gaza and southern Lebanon has, if anything, reinforced this view, and Olmert, who was elected on a mandate to complete Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank, now finds himself under pressure to expand, not diminish, Israel's territorial domination.
This is not the brief Olmert sought when he became prime minister, nor is it by any means certain that he has the ability to adapt to the challenging predicament in which he now finds himself.
There is also a genuine fear that Olmert's inexperience as a military strategist could lead to Israel escalating its current onslaught to truly apocalyptic proportions.
The Israeli government has already blamed Syria and Iran for the unrest on its northern border. If the Israelis attempted to punish Damascus, it would open up a new front not just in the Near East but in the Gulf, where the hardline regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already declared its readiness to come to Syria's defence.
Olmert needs to think long and hard whether the abduction of two Israeli soldiers merits a military escalation that could have truly catastrophic consequences not just for Israel, but the entire world.
