TEL AVIV, Israel — With Prime Minister Olmert’s government facing trouble after the cease-fire in Lebanon, the man who might just lead its replacement will be arriving in Israel on Thursday.

Moshe Ya’alon, the general who broke the back of the second Palestinian Arab intifada in 2003 only to find himself fired from his job as chief of staff of the military for opposing Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of settlements and soldiers from Gaza, is something like Israel’s General Dwight Eisenhower, a popular ex-general who is being pursued quietly by Israel’s conservative opposition that seeks a steady hand in what is shaping up to be a long war against Islamic terror.

Just like Ike, the military hero is waiting for the right moment to enter politics. The general so far has not declared his allegiance to any party. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Ya’alon said he was returning from a residency at the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs to take up a post at the Shalem Center, a center-right think tank in Jerusalem, and to write a book.

“I am going back now but I don’t want to speak politics. I am ready to speak substance, not to speak about this party or that party, but to speak out my mind,” he said.

But Mr. Ya’alon’s mind is very much in step with the Likud opposition that has behind the scenes sought to revive its party with his prestige. A poll earlier this year conducted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs found that Mr. Ya’alon enjoyed a 90% approval rating.

The general, like the vanquished Likud party, warned that Israel’s withdrawal a year ago from Gaza would imperil its southern cities. He shares the frustration of Likud leaders that the war in Lebanon was fought in a feckless manner and argues that Israel and the west must eventually confront Iran.

A spokesman for the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday agreed that Mr. Ya’alon’s positions on war and peace were in line with his boss. But he cautioned that no deals had been done and denied Israeli press reports that Mr. Netanyahu was in close touch with General Ya’alon over the last week.

“There is nothing done yet. We will announce something when there is something to announce,” the Netanyahu spokesman, Ofir Akunis, said. “Netanyahu and Ya’alon see eye to eye on a lot of issues, including the disengagement issue, the Hezbollah issue, the situation in Judea and Samaria.”

On Tuesday in New York, the general dropped a powerful hint about his political ambitions. He gave an address at a commemoration of the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Polish Zionist journalist considered the ideological founder of Likud and the most vocal proponent among the early Zionists of Israel extending its borders to both sides of the Jordan River.

In that speech, before an audience from the hawkish Americans for a Safe Israel, he said it was the time ask “hard questions” of Israel’s leaders in light of the cease-fire in Lebanon. He was sharp in his barbs against relinquishing land for peace in the case of the Oslo process, and unilateral disengagement in the case of the post-Oslo realignment plan drafted by Ariel Sharon.

“We in Israel prefer to deceive ourselves, to delude ourselves, to believe that by appeasement, by giving up territories, we will reach peace and tranquility,” Mr. Ya’alon said. “And we ignore the fact that on the other side in what is called the Palestinian Authority there was no, and there is no, leadership ready to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish independent state.”

An expert on the writings of Jabotinsky and a Middle East scholar at the Hudson Institute, Meyrav Wurmser, yesterday said, “I think in choosing to speak there, at Jabotinsky’s Yartzheit celebration, he is making a little bit of a political statement. In the world of people from the Jabotinsky right, his birthday as well as his death, it is something steeped in meaning.”

A former chief of staff to Mr. Netanyahu, Yechiel Leiter, said there were four possibilities as to what Mr. Ya’alon’s political future would be. He could: join Likud under Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership in a bid to be either defense minister or chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force; make a bid to join Likud in an attempt to be the party’s leader; come back to Jerusalem and start his own policy operation in a bid to create his own party; or join the Olmert government as either a replacement for the Labor defense minister, Amir Peretz, or as a replacement to the scandal-plagued military chief of staff, General Dan Halutz.

“I think Bibi would very much like the first scenario to play out and I would assume is making every effort to make this happen,” Mr. Leiter said.