His body was found after a woman complained about the smell of decomposition. His body was in too bad a state for the police to tell at once if he had been shot. No one knows how long the car had been parked in the neighbourhood Which is stranger still. Because throughout his disappearance – when his car must also have been missing – no one thought to publish a photograph of the vehicle, or even to print its registration number.Slowly, Jessy Irani made the weary rounds of statesmen, following in the footsteps of thousands of other relatives of the missing during the war.Christian MPs rallied to her aide. Just before her husband was found, she even gained an audience with the Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud, who said the abduction placed Lebanon’s credibility as a state at risk.It was all too late So the usual suspects were being brought up again yesterday.

Could the Syrians have wanted Irani out of the way? Unlikely. The Lebanese Forces have relations with Syrians and – as one Lebanese journalist asked – “who had ever heard of Irani before he disappeared?”There were rumours that he had maintained contact with former Israeli collaborators who worked in Israel’s old occupation zone in southern Lebanon. Could Hizbollah have taken him for questioning? Privately, the Lebanese prosecutor does not believe this. These days, when Hizbollah have interrogated a Lebanese, they usually hand their prisoners to the government.Two days after his kidnapping, however, Irani – or someone else – made a call on the missing man’s mobile phone. The phone’s location at the time was registered at Mreijeh, which is a largely Shia Muslim area of Beirut controlled by Hizbollah. But the mobile phone call point also covers an area called Hazmieh, which is Christian, and where Irani would have felt at home.

The caller could have been from just about any of the old civil war factions.By yesterday, the president of the Phalange Party, Karim Pakradouni, was calling the murder “a violation of the security of every citizen and of civil peace”. During Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, at least 150,000 people were killed; 18,000 of the dead were kidnapped Now that figure stands at 18,001.. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s hard man, showed no outward sign yesterday of backing away from his sudden decision to throw out four of his cabinet ministers. The move plunged the country into a political storm in the midst of the long and bloody conflict with the Palestinians. Today is likely to see some intense horse-trading in which Mr Sharon and the ultra-Orthodox Shas will either mend their differences or he will try to recruit several other small parties to shore up the government.The Prime Minister said he had no intention of changing his mind. An outraged Mr Sharon dispatched letters of dismissal to the ministers – which do not take effect until early tomorrow – after the government unexpectedly lost the first Knesset reading of an emergency economics package by three votes on Monday.

The package cut the budget to take account of the immense economic impact of the 19-month conflict, including the cost of the military offensive into the occupied territories.The Shas party, including the Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, voted against the government, alarmed by the prospect of cuts in family support to their core blue-collar constituents. The loss of Shas and that of the smaller religious United Torah Judaism party, which also rebelled, would reduce the government’s support in the 120-member Knesset from 82 to 60 seats.Theoretically, this would expose Mr Sharon to the risk of losing a no-confidence motion –raising the possibility of early elections – unless he can bolster his coalition. He is likely to look in particular to the centrist secular Shinui party, and the far-right National Union/ Yisrael Beitenu bloc.The hiatus spawned speculation about early elections and fresh cries of crisis, reminiscent of the political meltdown experienced in 2000 by Mr Sharon’s predecessor Ehud Barak, whose government was hit by a Shas walkout.Certainly, the defeat of the budgetary package, which goes to a crucial second vote tonight, was a serious setback. And the mere talk of a political crisis is destabilising, and potentially self-fulfilling, in Israel’s volatile political arena.