A lost faction

On his modest days, he thinks he's Yitzhak Rabin. On his more pompous days, he thinks he's David Ben-Gurion. In between, he's behaving like a Rockefeller. He lives in a Tel Aviv apartment worth NIS 40 million, and from which, on a clear day, he can see Jerusalem. On his sentimental days, he's vaguely reminiscent of Leonardo Di Caprio, standing at the bow of the Titanic with his new love and roaring into the wind, "I'm the king of the world!"

He dresses and accessorizes in items bought from luxury shops, even if his suits often seem so big on him that only his fingertips can be seen protruding from the sleeves. I won't repeat here the list of his travels abroad, or the magnificent suites he stayed in at the taxpayer's expense. The establishment of the state runs through hotel rooms: The Biltmore hotel earned its place in history when the top ranks of the Zionist movement met there and decided to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

Ben-Gurion stayed twice at the Warldof Astoria - the first time to close an agreement with then chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the fruits of which we enjoy to this day, and the second time to meet with president John F. Kennedy, who for the very first time asked an Israeli leader whether Israel had a nuclear program. Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Levi Eshkol stayed at the posh Hotel Le Bristol in Paris, but with a minuscule entourage and never in a royal suite. Yitzhak Rabin once stayed at the Plaza in New York, but never returned: The few aides he had brought along couldn't sleep for the cockroaches roaming their rooms.

Ehud Olmert's hedonism as mayor of Jerusalem brought him where he is today - the dock. And Ehud Barak needs to be utterly insensitive to anoint himself, on the very day his extravagance was starring in the headlines, as chairman of the ministerial ethics committee in place of Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog.

But what we are witnessing here is not the disease; it's a symptom. Or, as an observer from within the party recently put it, Barak is a catastrophe both for Labor and for good government. MK Daniel Ben Simon, who resigned yesterday as party whip, gave a harsh picture of the Knesset faction's state and of what its leader is doing to it.

"At the first faction meeting, where I was elected to the position, 12 out of 13 MKs were present, and I haven't seen them since," he said. "Often I would sit at the table on my own, waiting for the MKs to arrive. Only two people witnessed this - Yitzhak Rabin from one wall, David Ben-Gurion from the other. Two of the labor movement's prime ministers who, if they could speak, would cry out loud."

Ben Simon will not be joining the "rebel" MKs, but he is no longer standing with Barak. This leaves the Labor chairman with seven MKs, all of them ministers or deputy ministers. When he became party chairman, Labor had 19 Knesset seats. In the election that he himself instigated, the number fell to 13. Now he has brought it down to seven. "He's beginning to look like a caricature of a leader," a Labor source said.

Barak brought down the Labor Party because he sees himself as a gift of God, indispensable and irreplaceable. In real life, however, he couldn't care less about leadership - he only wants to be minister of defense. He does not see himself as the ideological leader of a movement. He is, in fact, little more than a technocrat, who has brought his party to rock bottom.

Barak appears to realize he is nearing the end of this phase of his career, which is probably the reason he has been steering ever more to the right. The promises to improve Israel's standing in the world were never kept. "Israel's international standing is suffering a heartrending retreat," said Ben Simon. "We broke our promise to evacuate outposts, we broke our promise to freeze settlements, we broke our promise to do everything possible to restart the peace process."

In private talks with his MKs, Barak says that it isn't our fault, it's the Arabs. That they want our home. It reminds me of how a few years ago, Barak told me that the plot of land on which the Haaretz building stands once belonged to Arabs. They want the 1948 borders, he said; there's nobody to talk to. His inner right-winger has finally emerged.

Barak knows he will never be prime minister again. For this reason, he is trying to ally himself with Benjamin Netanyahu, or maybe even to outflank him on the right - anything to stay defense minister. Who knows, maybe when the Labor Party is beyond all hope, we will see those two becoming running mates.