_______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ http://www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] BARAK ARRANGING DECK CHAIRS ON TITANIC By Martin Sieff UPI senior news analyst "New general elections in Israel will torpedo and sink Barak's already- waterlogged career faster than it took to fill took those first five compartments of the Titanic." "Whoever he loses to, Barak probably will be surprised again when it happens. Commentators on both right and left in Israel have noted that nothing seems to be able to dent Barak's serene confidence in his own brilliance and unfailing judgment." WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the Knesset Tuesday that he welcomed the prospect of early elections. You might as well believe the captain of the Titanic if he said he welcomed hitting the iceberg. In fact, Barak tried as hard as he could to stave off facing the Israeli public less than two years after he had supposedly won a full mandate from them. He even tried to broker a deal with the opposition Likud Party, which has been the fiercest critic of his peace and security policies. New general elections in Israel will torpedo and sink Barak's already-waterlogged career faster than it took to fill took those first five compartments of the Titanic. Everybody in Israel realizes this. Everyone, that is, except possibly Barak himself. Only 17 months after winning one of the most spectacular landslide victories in his nation's political history, Barak is regarded as an embarrassing encumbrance by his own party. His three main coalition partners bailed out on him back in July before the Camp David summit, fearing he would offer too many concessions to the Palestinians. As it turned out, Barak fulfilled their fears -- and then some. He offered to give away far more than they had dreamed, only to see Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat contemptuously brush his offer aside. From his own perspective, Arafat had plenty of his own reasons. Barak has managed to perform the extraordinary feat of infuriating left and right, hawks and doves, at the same time. He won the May 1999 election on a platform of caution on the peace process, coupled with long-overdue social reforms at home. But then he concentrated fulltime on pushing through early peace deals -- first with Syria, and then with the Palestinians. And he ignored his domestic constituency that had been crying out for reform. Far from pulling the political teeth from Israel's immensely well-entrenched religious parties, Barak gave them -- especially the Oriental Jewish Shas -- everything they could extort from him in return for their support on the peace process. Wits in Israel said that Barak had not even been able to buy Shas off. He was only able to rent it by the month. From the very beginning, Barak showed what was widely seen -- and criticized -- as an arrogant disdain for the very nature of Israel's political process. He ignored his own Cabinet and treated prominent party figures with a disdain that equaled that of his no-less-arrogant -- and almost as politically inept -- predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu. Prominent figures in his own Labor Party such as Knesset (Parliament) Speaker Avraham Burg and former Histadrut trade union leader Chaim Ramon seethed with frustration. Barak's treatment of key coalition allies like Natan Sharansky, the influential and widely respected leader of the powerful Yisrael B'Aliya Party or Rabbi Yitzhak Levy of the National Religious Party, was equally offhand. He never bothered to consult them about key decisions of foreign policy or security. He never bothered trying to even pretend to build any personal relations with any of them. Yet he appears to have been surprised when Sharansky led Yisrael B'Aliya out of the government on the eve of the Camp David summit. And then Levy and his NRP and the powerful Shas Party of Sephardi Jews, the third largest in the Knesset, pulled out too. Barak was then left to seek a consensus for the sweeping peace concessions he was offering with only a quarter of the Knesset's 120 members, still behind him - and many of them supported him only grudgingly. Barak seemed to go out of his way to alienate Arafat too. Arafat in the past had built a strong working relationship with Barak's mentor and predecessor Yitzhak Rabin. He had also worked well with Shimon Peres. And although Arafat and Netanyahu had openly loathed each other, even they had proved capable of making agreements and ensuring they were fulfilled when it suited them. But Barak seemed to go out of his away to alienate the cunning, shrewd, street-smart and immensely experienced Palestinian leader. First, he virtually ignored him for months while openly courting Jordan and Arafat's greatest enemy, President Hafez Assad of Syria. It was only when the cautious Assad would not strike a deal with Barak, as he was sure he would, that the Israeli leader belatedly turned to trying to work one out with Arafat, but by then the damage was done. Just as he underestimated and alienated Arafat, so he also completely failed to understand him. Arafat's rejection of Barak's terms at Camp David could have come as no surprise to anyone who had bothered to listen to what the Palestinian leader and his top lieutenants had actually said about their positions. But Barak was surprised anyway. He was even more surprised on Sept. 28 when the second Palestinian Intifada, or protest uprising, exploded on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. For the past two months, the intifada has raged, costing around 30 Israeli lives and at least 240 Palestinian and Israeli Arab ones. Barak has used more force against the Palestinians than any Israeli leader in the 33 years since Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War. Yet he has failed to deter either the Palestinians, or their leader, Arafat. Polls say Netanyahu would hammer Barak into defeat if he can recapture the leadership of Likud and its nomination to run for prime minister. Even Sharon, who has usually trailed Barak in popularity in the past, looks as if he would be able to beat him now. Whoever he loses to, Barak probably will be surprised again when it happens. Commentators on both right and left in Israel have noted that nothing seems to be able to dent Barak's serene confidence in his own brilliance and unfailing judgment. Barak still appears to believe he is politically unsinkable. Captain Smith of the Titanic thought that about himself and his ship too. He was wrong. ISRAEL'S BARAK SAYS HE IS READY FOR NEW ELECTIONS JERUSALEM (AFP - 28 Nov) - - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced on Tuesday that he was ready for new elections, throwing down the gauntlet to political opponents critical of the way he has handled two months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed. "I am ready for general elections for the prime minister and the Knesset," he said during a stormy debate in parliament as it prepared to vote on a series of opposition-sponsored bills calling for new elections. "The date will be fixed over the course of the coming days in coordination with the various parties," he said. Barak has been without a majority in the 120-member parliament since July and has tried in vain to form a national emergency government with the right-wing opposition Likud party in the face of the violence. "I'm not blind. I can see that the Knesset wants new elections. I am not afraid of elections. I have always won," Barak said in a speech that was frequently punctuated by heckling. Israeli radio reported that the Likud, lead by the hawkish Ariel Sharon, was expected to easily muster the necessary 61-vote majority for the bills that are still due to be voted on at 10:30 pm (2030 GMT). "The responsibility for the situation in Israel and the fact we are obliged to go to early elections at such a bad time is down to one man: Prime Minister Ehud Barak," Sharon told parliament. Barak and his Labour-led coalition took office in July 1999 on a promise to make a peace of the brave with Israel's Arab neighbours but he has seen his dreams collapse in a wave of violence that has claimed the lives of more than 290 people. He was elected to a four-year term in May 1999 but has faced a rocky road since, and his government was left with just 30 seats on the eve of the Camp David peace summit in July after a mass defection by right-wing and religious parties. Earlier in the day, Barak had called on Sharon to join a national emergency government to deal with the unrest, saying "the nation and MPs themselves deep down are not interested in elections at this time." Sharon had repeatedly rebuffed Barak's appeals and called on the prime minister to abandon the central tenets of his peace policies, which he says have betrayed the Jewish state. The Palestinians have warned that they will not resume peace negotiations if a future Israeli government included Sharon. They blame Sharon for triggering the current wave of unrest by his visit on September 28 to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied east Jerusalem, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews. Barak dismissed a public opinion poll released Friday which gave former right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a 21 percentage point lead. Netanyahu, who took a time out from politics after losing to Barak in a landslide, has consistently led both Barak and Sharon in opinion polls. 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