MIDEAST: Israel Confronts Political Crisis

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, May 25 2007 (IPS) - Judging by the interest – or distinct lack thereof – that the public and media have displayed towards the vote Monday for the leadership of Israel’s centre-left Labour Party, it would seem that few believe the outcome will have a major impact on the country’s political future. That is because opinion polls consistently place the centre-right Likud party way ahead of Labour in a general election.

But that doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t high in Monday’s race. If embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not survive the publication of the final report into his handling – or mishandling, as most Israelis see it – of the war in Lebanon last summer, the country could again find itself at the polls.

And, considering the vicissitudes of Israeli politics – there have been five elections in the last 10 years – it would be foolish to rule out the possibility that the winner of the Labour leadership race will mount a serious challenge for the top job.

Before they set their sites on the Prime Minister’s Office, though, the two frontrunners, Ami Ayalon and Ehud Barak, will be focused on garnering the 40 percent they require to win in the first round of voting. If they fail, a second round will be held in mid-June.

Pollsters have been notoriously inaccurate in predicting party primary races, but if they are right, Ayalon holds a clear, but slim lead over Barak. Two polls published Friday gave him a four-point lead, but that is within the statistical margin of error. Barak, though, will be hoping he can win in the first round: the polls show Ayalon opening up a significant 10-point gap in the second round.

Both are former generals. Barak was chief of staff in the 1990s and Ayalon chief of the navy, but their campaign strategies have been a study in contrasts. Ayalon, trying to capitalise on the fact that he is more popular among the general public than Barak, has been outspoken, seeking the limelight. If they vote for him, he has been indicating to Labour members, the party will win more mandates in a general election than under Barak.

Barak, aware of his tarnished image among the public ever since his term as prime minister ended with the outbreak of the second Intifadah uprising in 2000, has run a low-key campaign, spending most of his time in closed parlour meetings with Labour members or in off-the-record discussions with leading journalists. Only he has the experience, he has told them, to contend with the complex political and strategic challenges Israel faces.

Experience is the 65-year-old Barak’s strongest card. After finishing his term as army chief and entering politics, he served as foreign minister, defence minister and interior minister, before becoming prime minister in 1999. Barak’s Achilles heel is the fact that his term ended in ignominy: Israeli voters turfed him out of office when Israel found itself engulfed in a second Palestinian uprising which erupted just weeks after Barak failed to negotiate a peace agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Camp David.

When he returned to the political arena earlier this year, with the announcement that he was competing for leadership of the Labour Party, Barak conceded he had “made mistakes” during his term in office. The admission was part of an attempt to break down the public’s image of him as an arrogant, know-it-all loner, unwilling to consult or take advice. Leadership, he declared on his return to politics, is “a shared burden, not a solo mission.”

Ayalon’s lack of experience – he has never held a ministerial post – is one of his main weaknesses. But he is a new face and his no-nonsense image and call for a new, clean style of politics, has struck a chord with Labour voters.

Ayalon, who was brought in to rehabilitate the Shin Bet security service after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, is generally perceived as being more dovish than Barak. In 2003, Ayalon teamed up with moderate Palestinian professor Sari Nusseibeh and got hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians to put their signatures on an unofficial peace plan. Called ‘The People’s Voice’, the plan called for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and ruled out the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

But the two men do not seem that far apart on the Palestinian issue. At his Camp David talks with Arafat, Barak spoke of a Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank and was even prepared to make concessions in Jerusalem – until then a taboo no Israeli leader had been prepared to confront.

The focus of the election campaign has largely been determined by the publication earlier this month of an interim report on the government’s handling of the war in Lebanon last summer. The report was scathing in its criticism of Olmert, accusing him of a “severe failure” in judgement in his decision to launch a military campaign against Hezbollah.

Calls for the prime minister to resign, from across the political spectrum, forced Ayalon and Barak to publicly state their positions. Ayalon was first: if he won on May 28, he said, he would quit the government if Olmert refused to stand down.

Barak, maybe more in tune with the party faithful, was nuanced: calling on Olmert to “draw conclusions” in the wake of the report, he said he would push for early elections if the prime minister did not quit, but that he was prepared to serve as defence minister in an interim government under Olmert until a date could be set for a national poll.

Barak is aware that while Labour voters want to see Olmert out of office, their desire to be in government is stronger. With polls showing Netanyahu and Likud winning an election, Labour members are worried that if the country goes to the polls, they could find themselves languishing in opposition.

Barak and Ayalon’s fate could well be determined by one of the other three candidates in the race – party chairman and defence minister Amir Peretz, and two Labour lawmakers, Ophir Pines-Paz and Danny Yatom.

Peretz, who seems to have been irreparably damaged by the war in Lebanon (he has 15-20 percent in the polls) insists he will go the distance. But if Pines-Paz (8 percent) or Yatom (2 percent) decide to pull out before Monday, the race could be determined in the first round – possibly Barak’s best chance, if the polls that give Ayalon a clear lead in the second round are to be believed.