On Tel Aviv's Shenkin Street on Fridays more young Israelis between the ages of 12 to 40 juggle and jiggle through the one block roadblock of pedestrian walkway from Allenby to the little people's park with the huge fountain, than there are Jews in the Palestine. i.e., the West Bank.

Last week, a stand gathering signatures for the legalization of marijuana collected its thousand John Hancocks in a country where the military censor still is legitimate by democratic standards.

This week, Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a 75-year-old man with more understanding of what could be in the year 2020 than most 20 year olds in Israel -- or for that matter overseas -- explained why he wanted what are being called early elections in Israel, probably in late May.

He explained he was deliberating for the last few weeks, after turning down a proposal right after the Rabin assassination to run to win a 70 percent majority, and that he turned down that idea "on the threshold" -- the same term (though in a different context) that US Secretary of State Warren Christopher used when he explained the Israeli-Syria talks had crossed a "new threshold," like a Rubicon of understanding that the time had come to work out a solution tot he problem rather than continuing it.

Peres was the first prime minister whose life was physically endangered by Jews during an Israeli election campaign, when Menachem Begin used to ridicule him and Ronni Milo -- currently the most moderate, realistic politician in the Likud, but hardly capable of beating Bibi, let alone Benny, to say nothing of Dan -- was charging Peace Now as funded by the CIA and ran a campaign disseminating rumors that Peres owned Taditran stock, Haim Bar-Lev was a Soviet spy, and Yitzhak Rabin a drunk. In Bet Shean, Peres' car was assaulted with club-bearing Likud goons paid for by the party. In Jerusalem's Kiryat Yovel that year, Likud goons made Peres supporters pass through a gauntlet of stick-bearing hooligans in order to hear him speak.

Yet, as prime minister on two occasions he has been the most popular since his mentor David Ben-Gurion. The polls nowadays show he'll win a first round victory in the coming elections, the first to be held under a new law that has Israelis voting for a prime minister on one ballot and a Party ticket on the other.

Meanchem Begin, in his heyday as the populist voice of an Israeli -- and world -- Jewry that always felt the sabras were heroes, but not exactly God's gift to history as spiritually motivated personalities, could never have won such a majority. At best, Begin regarded the shabkniks who protected him and the generals he thought listened to him, to be resurrected Maccabis. And at best as prime minister he managed a poularity rating in the 60's right after Camp David. But by the time Arik Sharon and Raful Eitan got the first hundred Israelis (and the first 1,000th Lebanese-Palestinian-Arab-whoever was there) killed in Lebanon, Begin's popularity was well below 50 percent.

Peres, on the other hand, in the two years as prime minister during the national unity years between 1984-88, using Rabin as defense minister, got Israel out of Lebanon, and using Yitzhaki Moda'i -- the Likud's finance minister in that peculiar suspension of parliamentary democracy known as a wall-to-wall coaltion (though in the case of Israel at the time, it was not completely wall to wall, with the Communists and the Racists considered beyond the pale) got Israel out of 400% inflation.

Now, he's popular again, and it's not, as Bibi's people will charge, "a cynical exploitation of Rabin's assassination" but rather the logical progression of a professional politician's career from the days he was an outsider at the Ben-Shemen agricultural school, a sensitive Jewish poet from Poland, amidst all those burly sabra kids, finally feeling like an insider, admired by the new youth of Israel who regard the planet their home, and peace a nobler calling than war.

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Peres' popularity is the result of his singlemindedness, not his unswerving abidance by ideology. He understands new ideas mean new ways of perceiving reality. On TV as leader of the opposition after Peres announced new elections, Bibi asked, "Where are the computers for every falah?" trying to deride Peres' vision of the New Middle East. Demeaning the Arabs, the essentially racist/ethnicist/tribalist position of any "Nationalist Camp" Bibi promised blinking-eyed, like the chipboard furniture salesman he once was, to "get a computer for every Jew," paused momentarily as if realizing the faux pas, and added, "for every Arab, for every citizen of Israel," and frankly, though I suspect he knows how to use a mouse, I doubt he surfs on the web.

I know Peres hasn't used a typewriter since 1950-something, when at 29 he was deputy director general of the Defense Ministry under David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister to also hold the defense portfolio, and he's had a secretary do all the typing ever since. But his bureau chief is a net-freak named Avi Gil, who might even run across this article.

It was clear through the screen of the tube that Bibi's promises of the future were simply a reaction to Peres' speech, which as I said, began with Rabin's assassination and his memory of the moments before the gunshots, when twice as many Israelis as live in the territories gathered in downtown Tel Aviv to sing a song of peace last November.

Peres explained that his role was not only to make peace with the Arabs but also to help bridge the country between the assassination and the reality of life continuing; said that he believed the outgoing government, which he led (in partnership with Rabin since '92, alone since the end of '95), has much to point to with pride -- inflation's down, unemployment's down, and the talks are proceeding apace with the Syrians); and then promised he'd be flexible with the opposition, which wants do delay the vote as long as possible so they can figure out what they're going to say -- but no later than early June for the polls.

Peres didn't say he expected to win. As a politician he knows that nothing in the future is certain. But it's clear he not only will win but that he should, given the quality of the opposition.

Raful Eitan, number two in the Nationalist Camp that according to some local reports is considering calling itself Mahatz, meaning Strike Force, said the day of the Peres announcement that if elected he'd freeze all talks with the Arabs for six months, so he'd have time to go over every detail of the agreement and "renegotiate" whatever he didn't like. Bibi, of course, just made sure he was talking into the camera, so much so that he's in trouble of being accused of Peres' problem in 1976 -- he doesn't blink.

Nowadays, Peres is sure of himself enough to look down at a piece of paper without worrying about his eyes -- they're already famous worldwide. And David Levy, like Peres, wants the vote as soon as possible, wanting more than anything to see Bibi fall, so he can reclaim the rightful mantle he proclaimed was his in 1983 when Menachem Begin slipped off to the graveyard to be with Aliza and all the boys who died in Lebanon, and the Likud picked Yitzhak Shamir, a man who says his happiest moment was when he was hiding five feet underground in a dank basement, waiting for the British to come capture him.