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Return Engagement

February 5 • 2009

iN

ne month ago, Ehud Barak
made his maiden appearance
on Glorious Land, Israel's ver-
sion of Saturday Night Live, and was
roundly roasted about his Labor Party's
poor prospects in the Feb. 10 election.
Though the former prime minister
weathered it all with good humor, his
flat delivery and occasional line-flubbing
were noted.
But Barak probably was preoccupied
with something: He had just come from
a secret meeting with Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni at which they gave a green light to
a blinding blitz on the Hamas-run Gaza
Strip. The war began shortly thereafter.
The surprise of the assault, which gut-
ted Hamas capabilities before the group
could muster a response, certainly was
helped by the stealth tactics of Barak,
Israel's 66-year-old defense minister.
And though there is debate over the
long-term gains of the 22-day offensive,
few in Israel challenge that it was a bril-
liantly executed campaign that atoned for
the setbacks of the 2006 Lebanon War.
Barak, a decorated former commando
and military chief of staff, is getting the
lion's share of the credit.
A Ma'ariv survey of public sentiment
about the Gaza War gave Barak a 73
percent approval rating — higher than
Olmert or Livni.
But while Barak's center-left Labor
Party is now set to win 14 or 15 of the
Knesset's 120 seats, twice the number
predicted before the offensive, Barak
continues to trail Livni, his rival from the
centrist Kadima Party, and the front-run-
ner, Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu. Polls
show that Labor's third-place ranking is
even in doubt, with the right-wing Yisrael
Beiteinu Party rising precipitously amid
Israel's security jitters.
"Though the public generally corn-
mends Barak for his performance during
the war, it does not see him as a candidate
for prime minister;' noted Ma'ariv's politi-
cal correspondent, Maya Bengal.
The paradox doubtless puzzles some
observers outside Israel. In a nation per-

,

Defense Minister Ehud Barak meets then-U.S. presidential candidate Barack
Obama on July 23.

petually at war, Barak has shown mettle
both for battle and diplomatic strategies.
Born Ehud Brog in Kibbutz Mishmar
Hasharon, the younger Barak was a
cowboy with a flair for cerebral pursuits
such as classical piano and stripping and
rebuilding Swiss watches. This combina-
tion made him a perfect fit for Sayeret
Matkal, Israel's most elite commando
unit, which he joined at age 17 and where
he would change his last name to Barak,
Hebrew for "lightning:'
While physically small, Barak did not
lack for courage or ingenuity. He clam-
bered up the ranks, overseeing opera-
tions such as the 1972 raid on a hijacked
Sabena airliner and, a year later, the assas-
sination of PLO leaders in Beirut. In the
latter operation, he infiltrated dressed as a
woman, lugging grenades in his brassiere.
Having garnered a record number
of military decorations, Barak became
Israel's top general just as the first rap-
prochement efforts with the Palestinians
were getting under way in the early 1990s.
He favored Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,
another former chief of staff; and the
alliance paved the way for Barak to join
Labor when he left the military.
After Rabin's assassination in 1995
by a right-wing zealot, elder statesman
Shimon Peres took over Labor and
assumed the premiership, only to be
trounced in elections by the firebrand
Netanyahu.
Riding a wave of Laborite hunger for a
young warrior-peacemaker at the helm,
Barak became party leader and toppled
Netanyahu in 1999 elections. But the
single-minded Napoleonic energy that

brought Barak such speedy political suc-
cess would prove to undermine him in
both the personal and diplomatic spheres.
Many party comrades, such as
Avraham Burg in the 1990s and, more
recently, Ami Ayalon, would describe
Barak as vexingly inscrutable, keep-
ing his own counsel and issuing orders
— whether on key matters of national
defense or on the pettier dispensations of
Labor policies — with all the warmth of
a martinet.
Then there was his breakneck
peace negotiations with Syria and the
Palestinians, which delivered only disap-
pointment and made many Israelis ques-
tion whether Barak's promised conces-
sions would merely embolden enemies of
the Jewish state.
Such fears were further underscored
by Baralc's decision to pull Israeli troops
unilaterally out of southern Lebanon in
2000 — a move now recognized as hav-
ing prompted Yasser Arafat to order the
Palestinian terrorist campaign of the sec-
ond intifada in the West Bank and Gaza.
Barak was ousted by the Likud's Ariel
Sharon in 2001 and spent the next six
years making money in the private sector,
working as a business consultant abroad.
Nahum Barnea, senior commentator
for Israel's daily Yediot Achronot, summed
up Barak this way: "He's a gifted, bril-
liant, sober observer who can analyze
the political and security situation better
than anyone else.
"But he does not have the patience, the
ability to engage in dialogue or the under-
standing of people to change the situation
for the better." LI