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Peretz, Barak trade insults at heated party meet By Mazal Mualem Squabbling in the Labor Party reached the boiling point at yesterday's meeting of its Knesset faction, with a harsh exchange between party leader and defense minister Ehud Barak and his predecessor, MK Amir Peretz. In an emotional outburst, Peretz accused Barak of being disconnected from reality and obsessed with being prime minister. Barak responded by calling Peretz "pathetic." The noisy argument came amid the embarrassing fallout from National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer's conversation Sunday with Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon, which was overheard through an open microphone. In it, Ben Eliezer criticized Barak's "suicidal" political conduct, as well as Barak's insinuations, in a meeting Sunday with bereaved families, that elections are imminent. Advertisement Both incidents publicly exposed the internal tensions in the Labor Party, at the center of which is the dispute between Barak and Peretz. Yesterday's faction meeting was scheduled a week ago to discuss the party's goals in the Olmert government in the wake of the final Winograd Report on the Second Lebanon War. The faction agreed on a series of objectives regarding education, economic issues and the peace process, and Barak even announced an agreement reached with Olmert to have Labor MK Avishay Braverman chair the Knesset Finance Committee. He thereby sought to create a sense of unity in the splintered faction. At the meeting, he also spoke of the need to get ready for elections and to recruit polling station observers. "We are not afraid of elections against Bibi," Barak said, referring to the opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyhu. Peretz, who loathes Barak, then lashed out at him in front of the astonished faction members: "You are disconnected from reality. You have an obsession with being prime minister, but you have no agenda. What is your social agenda? What is your political agenda? Who will even vote for you?" Peretz said. "You did not preserve the coalition achievements that I managed to get. I suggest that you stop being disconnected from reality and start talking to the Labor Party's excellent people in the field." Barak retorted: "Amir, I am finally convinced there is no chance of competing with you in being pathetic, so I won't respond to your speech and won't give out grades. Let every member judge for himself. I do take seriously the mission that was given to me, e must restore the Labor Party to the leadership of the country, and I am determined to do so with you or without you." Though Barak has said on various occasions in recent months that the Labor Party needs to prepare for elections, and that these will take place late this year or in early 2009, his close associations stress that he has no intention of generating a coalition crisis. Senior party officials say Barak is working to distinguish himself from Olmert and to distance himself from the Lebanon war, which is why he is occasionally drawn to discussing early elections. Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon, a confidant of Barak, yesterday criticized the "political" use bereaved families made of things Barak told them in a private meeting on Sunday. Barak was quoted as intimating that "elections will be held sooner than you think," and that Olmert should have resigned in the wake of the Second Lebanon War - statements he has made on several previous occasions. "I have a lot of respect for the bereaved families and am myself from a bereaved family," Simhon told Haaretz yesterday, "but it is unacceptable to me that the defense minister meets with bereaved parents and they go out and make politics and headlines out of this. I mean, even if Barak had kept quiet they would have made a headline out of it. This is dishonorable in my view." Simhon said the government has the wherewithal to continue for quite some time, but that "the Labor Party does not exist just to sit in the cabinet. We are not Olmert's safety net, and everything is open. We care about the peace process. Without it, we won't remain." Simhon's fellow Labor ministers - Yuli Tamir, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Isaac Herzog - are also not in favor of breaking up the partnership with Olmert. Simhon also related to his conversation with Ben-Eliezer on Sunday, which was overheard through an open microphone. In it, Ben-Eliezer criticized Barak's conduct and said, among other things, "if he wants to commit suicide - get up and commit suicide, I'm not with you." Another bit of that conversation also got air time yesterday: Ben-Eliezer's claim that Olmert offered Labor the chairmanship of the Knesset Finance Committee on condition that Braverman hold it, but that Barak refused. Simhon said this was a routine gripe session, "and Fuad [Ben-Eliezer] and Barak are like a pair of lovebirds. What did Fuad say? He didn't say that Barak is not good as Labor Party chairman or has failed as defense minister. Would you prefer that the criticism of Barak be about meals at hotels overseas? Fuad categorically did not seek to hurt Barak." Regarding Barak's relations with Olmert, Simhon insisted they are excellent: "I don't think there has ever been such a relationship between the prime minister and defense minister. But Barak is also the chair of the Labor Party and he has an agenda; he wants to be the next prime minister." Bookmark to del.icio.us   WHO knows? The WHO says Israel lets Gazans die in 'avoidable tragedies'. Friendly faces Google, Facebook and Yahoo heads will attend a J'lem technology summit.

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