Barak: Labor not averse to leading from within opposition

As exit polls were released late Tuesday, predicting 13 seats for the Labor Party and placing it fourth after Kadima, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, Labor Chairman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that his party will not hesitate to go to the opposition.

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"I suggest not putting us anywhere [in the coalition], it is not a given," he clarified. "As we've always done, we will think over what is best for Labor, and more importantly, what is best for the country. We won't serve in a government that isn't established by the specifications of our path, and we won't hesitate to go to the opposition and serve the people from there," Barak continued.

"I intend to leave here, at the helm of the Labor Party, and begin working starting tonight to bring the Labor Party back to where it rightfully belongs," the Labor chairman went on to say.

Barak said that the party knows how to "take blows and recover."

Referring to the possibility of sitting in the opposition, he said "this is an important service, many quality people have been there before me, and it is the place where one can find the path back to power."

Labor Secretary General MK Eitan Cabel also addressed the disappointing results of the exit polls, telling Haaretz that "the mistake was made many years ago, but the peak was when Barak was elected to lead the party, we should have gone to the opposition right then. We were given a second chance after Winograd (commission that investigated the failures of the Second Lebanon War), and even then we didn't do it. Now we are paying the price."

"Labor must do some soul searching after a poor showing," said Cabel.

"We failed," said Education Minister Yuli Tamir. "Now we must accept being in the opposition."

Asked where Labor went wrong, Tamir replied "it is too early to talk about mistakes, but one of the mistakes we made was that instead of talking about Labor's true message, the campaign camouflaged it."

Daniel Ben-Simon, No. 11 on the party list, told Haaretz earlier Tuesday that if the Labor Party won fewer than 20 seats, it would head for the Israeli political wilderness and take its place in the opposition.

The former Haaretz reporter said that Labor had "never felt an acute need to sit in the opposition before a situation like today's. Only as part of the opposition can we lift ourselves up and win."

Ben-Simon added that Labor would "wait for the results, and then decide whether to join the opposition or the coalition government."

Meanwhile, Barak said Monday he would not remain in his ministerial post in the new government if the party did not score more than 20 seats.

"People tell me: 'You should be defense minister,' but I want to say that I will not and could not be Israel's defense minister if Labor doesn't near the 20-seat mark," Barak said during a tree-planting ceremony in Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon, where he grew up.

Barak then addressed left-of-center voters, urging them not to cast their vote for Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party.

"Only a strong Labor could be the answer to the right-wing bloc. Center- left people who vote for Kadima are taking a huge gamble," Barak said. "Over a third of Kadima candidates are ardent rightists."

	Daniel Ben Simon.