Mr Barak has emerged from the negotiations with his reputation confirmed as a somewhat aloof and distant autocrat, disarmingly cleverand disquietingly mysterious.
The WikiLeaks spinoff OpenLeaks, for instance, despite its mysterious inability to launch over the last year and a half, suggests a clever model for future leaking sites: It plans to split publishing from the more technical task of ensuring anonymous submissions, and to simply pass on any leaks it receives to reporters at whatever media outlet the source chooses.