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Two years and counting By Yossi Verter Tags: Barak On Monday morning, the defense minister visited a Tel Aviv branch of the ORT vocational high-school network and met with senior students. It was the third school visited by Ehud Barak within a few days. Next week he is slated to visit another two. It's not by chance that he has asked his staff to fill every hole in his schedule with meetings with youngsters who were a mere 10 years old in 2001, when he was drummed out of office. They do not remember the way he treated colleagues or his "secular revolution" or Camp David and the intifada. The next election will be their first as voters. At Barak's insistence, these meetings are closed to the media. A transcript of his meeting at the ORT school, set out on 15 densely printed pages, was made available to Haaretz. In the first part, Barak sets forth his political, security, economic and moral worldview. He also talks about himself as a boy, when he was expelled from school and did not take the matriculation exams because he was bored and more interested in taking things apart and putting them back together. The transcript suggests that the meeting had an intimate feel to it. Advertisement One of the students asked what differentiates Labor from Kadima and Likud. One exceptional sentence from Barak's very long reply: "It is difficult for Kadima to bring this cargo of responsibility and judiciousness into the policy-security sphere." Barak disqualifies an entire party - the ruling party - from dealing with statecraft and security because it lacks "responsibility and judiciousness." Never mind Ehud Olmert, about whom the Winograd Committee in its report (which examined the conduct of the Second Lebanon War) reached similar conclusions. Barak is referring to Kadima: the concept, the framework, Tzipi Livni, Shaul Mofaz, Avi Dichter. Naturally, Barak wants to save Kadima from itself and us, the citizens, from Kadima. "I did the right thing by deciding to remain in the government [after the release of the Winograd report]," he says, "and I also think, looking back on what has happened since, that it was the right decision." "We will be compelled to take action in Gaza against the Qassams and the Grads," he says, referring to the rockets being fired from the Strip into the western Negev, "and we have quite a few unsettled accounts" with the Syrians and with Hezbollah. "There are many clouds gathering over the horizon. More than a few among us think a great effort has to be made and that we have to enter into negotiations with the Syrians. If we do not engage them at the negotiating table, we will end up engaging them on the battlefield." Barak is asked a question about leadership. "Leadership means to lead courageously, responsibly, consistently and honestly, and to expect that afterward the public will realize that. Sometimes it takes time. In the case of some leaders, it is only long after they are no longer leaders - in some cases after they are already buried - that the public understands the importance of the things they did or pushed for." Where will he be in another 10 years, when Israel celebrates its 70th birthday, he is asked. "I don't know," he says. "That depends on you, on how you vote. If I am fit, I will try to influence what is happening in the country. I can allow myself to live on a government salary in the future, too. If the public expresses its confidence in me, and if I am healthy, I imagine that I will be in one of the central executive positions. And happily so." Doing the dirty work The squabbling on Monday between Ehud Barak and his predecessor as defense minister and as Labor Party leader, Amir Peretz, was a rebroadcast of hundreds of similar occasions in the past decade. Peretz is really only looking for a banner to flaunt above his "social-welfare camp," whatever that may be. He came up with an extraordinarily populist piece of legislation: paying conscript soldiers minimum wage. It's just a small matter of NIS 7 billion. When Peretz was defense minister, he never thought of advancing an idea like this. This week his proposal passed a preliminary vote in the Knesset by a chance majority with the aid of Likud, two of whose senior figures - both former finance ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu and Silvan Shalom - voted in favor. Netanyahu could be prime minister in another year. Likud faction chairman MK Gideon Sa'ar, who helped Peretz obtain the majority, might be justice minister. Both of them will then have to mobilize a majority to repeal the law. Barak is right when he accuses Peretz and his colleague MK Yoram Marciano of relentlessly trying to sabotage what remains of the Labor faction's cohesiveness. Peretz is right when he accuses Barak of being responsible for the party's paralysis: There are no active institutions, no discussions, no processes under way. The reason why Barak pounds his fist on the table, as the mass-circulation daily Maariv described it, and demands that everyone who does not toe the line "climb the hill across the way and observe events from there," runs deeper than the quarrel with Peretz. When Barak looks around at the Labor parliamentary faction, he can see the fingerprints of the Prime Minister's Bureau almost everywhere. This is the main reason for the growing distrust between him and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The most blatant phenomenon is the bizarre relationship that has developed between Olmert and Peretz. Here are a few examples, just from the past few weeks: A month and a half ago, a telephone poll was conducted among Labor's cabinet ministers, seeking their approval for the appointment of one Shimon Cohen as a member of the Investments Center directorate. The ministers gave their unanimous approval. Cohen has been one of Peretz's closest colleagues for decades. "There is no way that Olmert, who put forward Cohen's candidacy, knew him. Their paths have never crossed. It's clear that this was a payment to Peretz, a bonus, however you want to call it," a senior Labor Party figure said this week. Or, take the attitude of the Prime Minister's Bureau toward Marciano, who, along with Peretz, constitutes the most cogent internal opposition to Barak. When Marciano calls the bureau, his requests are met handsomely and quickly. Even Labor MK Nadia Hilou, who was once firmly located in the Peretz camp - an affiliation that has diminished somewhat although she is still considered part of the opposition to Barak - is well treated by the Prime Minister's Bureau. On Monday two weeks ago, a Hilou bill, which was submitted that day, was placed on the agenda of the ministerial committee on legislation. The following day, the bill was exempted from having to go through the Knesset's House Committee, headed by Kadima, and two days later it was already being voted on in the Knesset plenum. There is no doubt: Someone in the Prime Minister's Bureau is working on Hilou's behalf. It was Labor MK Avishay Braverman, of all the coalition members, who was chosen by the Prime Minister's Bureau to accompany German Chancellor Angela Merkel on her visit to the Negev two weeks ago. True, Braverman was the longtime president of Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, but on the lists at Olmert's bureau he appears under the rubric of Barak's rivals. Word has it that Olmert intends to offer him the chairmanship of the Knesset's finance committee. Even if Barak wanted to fight back, he doesn't have the people to do the dirty work for him. There goes the country "The country is going down the tubes," says Labor MK Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, seated in the back of an armored Buick that is driving him south from the Gush Etzion settlements in the West Bank to the town of Kiryat Arba. It was Tuesday, and the country was in the grip of July-like weather. "We are drawing close to a situation in which, instead of there being two states for two nations, there will be one state for two nations." Ben-Eliezer is visiting the West Bank in his capacity as national infrastructures minister, together with senior officials from the ministry. The settler leaders compliment him for the attention he accords them, despite his political opinions. "As long as they are here," he says, "I will provide them with electricity, water and sewerage. I also know how to listen to them; I have learned that there is no customs duty on listening." Ben-Eliezer says openly what other senior ministers say off the record. "Israel needs the political process more than the Palestinians. Hamas is gaining momentum, getting stronger by the day. If we do not act quickly, we will find ourselves with Hamas in the West Bank, too. The time has come to release [Fatah leader] Marwan Barghouti from jail. He is the most popular person in the territories. He is the only one we can make progress with. Definitely not with [Palestinian Authority prime minister] Salam Fayyad or [Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas] Abu Mazen. There is no chance of a process with their current leadership. I told the prime minister, but he wants to gain time, virtual time." According to Ben-Eliezer, the negotiations now under way are "so much blather, games of honor. People do not understand the gravity of the situation. The nation is being deceived, not told the truth about the security situation. The Syrian-Lebanese- Hezbollah threat is becoming more and more concrete. I do not propose that we shrug off what that reptile, Nasrallah, says. It will be more dangerous to live in Tel Aviv than in Kiryat Shmona." Ben-Eliezer is sophisticated, clear and sharp. At the age of 72, he believes that he is past his political peak, so he allows himself to speak out. What does he have to lose? The same cannot be said of another member of the coalition, no less senior and perhaps even more so, who was asked this week to sum up two years of Olmert's term. It was exactly two years ago today, on March 28, 2006, that Israel voted Kadima. "Olmert is maintaining the situation," the senior figure, who is not one of the prime minister's opponents, said. "He is not doing anything, because he's afraid of losing power. He has to be a groundbreaker, to lead a bold move that will change everything radically. Otherwise he has no chance of being reelected. I understand his fear of risk-taking, but what is the whole thing worth, what's the fun of being prime minister, if all you do is just be there?" Doesn't Olmert want to be a groundbreaker, the senior figure is asked. "He does, but he's afraid." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Devil's weed New campaign equates smoking pot with terrorism. Bad company A BBC poll says Israel world's most hated country after Iran.   1.   Great Wizard Ben Eliezer who released Ahmed Yassin from jail 13:48  |  Absolute Sweden 28/03/08

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