German papers on Friday take a deep breath and for the first time in 12 days turn their attention away from the political crisis in Ukraine. What are they looking at instead? A smattering of international news from Palestinian elections, to Israel, to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Domestically, they report on the usual fare of rising unemployment rates and internal political squabbles.

Developments in the Middle East, however, are deemed worthy of comment by a number of dailies on Friday. First and foremost, the collapse of the Israeli government on Wednesday evening and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's search for a new coalition partner grabs commentators' attention. The trigger for the collapse was a conflict over the 2005 budget, but the roots, as the left-leaning Sueddeutsche Zeitung points out, are to be found in Sharon's plan to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip. It is an idea that his own Likud party doesn't like and one that Likud's natural allies -- the Orthodox parties -- find anathema. After a brutal summer of a crumbling coalition, Sharon was finally left with the secular Shinui Party -- who on Wednesday jumped ship because of Sharon's plan to fund Orthodox religious groups with tax Shekels.

Now, writes the Sueddeutsche, "Sharon is a very lonely captain with only 40 representatives from his own Likud party on his side -- out of which roughly half are against his current political course." The paper offers a solution -- with the Israeli economy struggling and with a recent report indicating that 1.4 million Israelis live under the poverty line, it is time to focus on the economy. "But Sharon, instead, prefers to treat the economy as a peripheral issue and mostly pays attention to his own legacy."

The financial daily Handelsblatt, however, sees hope in the political problems facing Sharon. More than anything, it shows, writes the paper, that Sharon is willing to pay a high political price for his plans to withdraw from Gaza. In other words, he is committed to the plan -- which could lead to an alliance with the Labor Party under Shimon Perez. "But the biggest hurdle lurks within Sharon's own party. Because the majority of the Likud Party's central committee rejects the Gaza withdrawal, an alliance with Perez could prohibit them from torpedoing the evacuation of the settlers from the Gaza Strip."

The conservative paper Die Welt takes a much clearer position. Mentioning the unexpected compliment Sharon received from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said that Sharon is the Palestinians' best chance for peace, the paper argues that Sharon will be able to push through his Gaza plans in the end. "The fact that his own Likud Party doesn't stand solidly behind him forces Sharon into a political balancing act. But he will subordinate all party squabbling to his ultimate goal of withdrawal. Mubarak is right: Sharon is able to solve problems -- and he will find the necessary parliamentary majority to do so."

The other Middle Eastern development that catches the media's eye on Friday is the candidacy of Marwan Barghouti for the office of Palestinian president. Barghouti's entry into the race has thrown the Palestinian Fatah party into a tizzy as he could end up being a strong challenger to the party's chosen candidate, Mahmoud Abbas. Barghouti is young, dynamic and behind bars in Israel for his role in struggling against the Israeli oppressor -- or for murder depending on your point of view.

It is exactly these radically different views of Barghouti that the Financial Times Deutschland looks at. Some, it notes, see Barghouti as the Nelson Mandela of the Palestinians. For others, he is a terrorist. But, the paper argues, he now has the best chance of anybody to get elected in the Jan. 9 vote as Abbas "is unpopular and is considered part of the old guard and of the "Tunisian Clique" -- part of the corrupt system." The paper further points out that, should he get elected, "the future of the Middle East will depend on his desire to convincingly slide into the role of politician."