The man who saved Olmert

When the Winograd Report was handed to the prime minister a loud thud shook the government compound in Jerusalem. As panic-stricken aides rushed to find out the source of the noise, they were told it was the great thorn that had been lifted from Ehud Olmert's side.

Until the press conference with Eliyahu Winograd, there was a sense of an impending Agranat-style earthquake liable to end in the prime minister's resignation and early elections. But although the word "bungle" appeared in the report 213 times, the word "failed" 190 times and the word "dawdled" 22 times, Olmert managed to escape by the skin of his teeth.

His major misstep was to rely on an army unprepared to launch an offensive war because it had focused for years on terror. With all the shock at how sloppily the Second Lebanon War was run, the coalition has stayed put and the prime minister is still in the saddle. The report is painful, Olmert says, but it could be a golden opportunity to fix things and do better.

As a seasoned politician, Olmert took advantage of the long months the committee spent burrowing into the war's failings to devote himself to the political process. He went to the Annapolis summit and committed himself to discuss the core issues, all fully coordinated with President George W. Bush, a true friend of Israel - and Olmert.

In the meantime, it is true, Olmert has not dismantled a single outpost, so as not to strengthen Likud, and he has not discussed Jerusalem in order to preserve majority support in the government, for fear that Defense Minister Ehud Barak might quit, as he intimated at the Sdot Yam press conference last year.

But Barak has been shuffling his feet. Even those closest to him were unable to figure out the workings of his brilliant mind. What was he waiting for? Was he worried that if Labor walked out, he might be left with Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman as defense minister in the best of cases, and Likud leader Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu as prime minister in the worst?

Barak still hasn't digested the fact that after his hasty resignation as prime minister at the end of 2000, Ariel Sharon trounced him by half a million votes - the most stinging defeat in Israel's history. That is a lesson not easily forgotten.

But Barak has proven that he has changed and learned from experience, as he declared when he ran for chairmanship of the Labor Party, and he has shown it by doing the opposite of what he promised. He has dropped like a bolt out of the blue to rescue Olmert.

"Politics has defeated the country," the reserve soldiers say. But politics is not a dirty word when it is a vehicle to save the country from government chaos. Maybe it would have been cleaner, from a national point of view, for Barak to announce a Labor walkout. "I read both parts of the report, including the classified appendix," he said, "and the way I read it, the failures are even worse than most people think."

But Barak sees things from a global perspective. He sees the Iranian threat, a possible confrontation with Hamas, Israel's obligation to restore its power of deterrence and the need to accomplish as much as possible before Bush leaves the White House.

Olmert and Barak speak the same language, and not only because both of them love watches, rare pens, the good life and hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Both are super-intelligent, highly ambitious and almost bursting with self-confidence. Both have the same interest in blocking Bibi and the right as the tone-setters, the ones who are determined to hold back political moves toward peace.

When Barak is accused of breaking his promise to quit the government, he can always cite an older precedent: From the Knesset podium, Levi Eshkol said: "I did promise, but so what? A person is not allowed to promise?" So what if Barak said what he said at Sdot Yam? To push the country into elections now would be suicide, especially when a Labor victory is not in his pocket.

The good of the country, getting the army back on its feet and making diplomatic headway are more important than a promise made under different circumstances - all the more so, when there are no fabulous alternatives lining up that would make going to the polls worthwhile.

The most important thing at the moment is political stability. Barak and Olmert need to work together. They need to establish mutual trust and pay no attention to provocations. Formally, it may have been necessary to rap Olmert on the knuckles and insist that he take ministerial responsibility as head of the system, but the good of the country comes first. You don't switch horses in midstream. Toying with the idea of early elections will only turn Ehud and Ehud into lame ducks at the least desirable moment.