Barak survives confidence vote

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak overcomes a move to topple the government before his Camp David departure.

©New York Times

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 11, 2000

JERUSALEM -- A defiant Ehud Barak faced down an unruly parliament Monday night, surviving a vote of confidence just an hour before leaving for what he hopes will be decisive peace talks with the Palestinians in Camp David, Md.

"From here, from united Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, the greatest leaders of Israel went out to meet the greatest and most important of historic decisions in the history of the nation," the prime minister told parliament, raising his voice above the jeers of the opposition. "I wish to depart today from Jerusalem to Camp David in order to complete the labor of peacemaking that was begun by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin," implicitly including himself in the company of his celebrated predecessors.

"I am not going alone," he continued, pointedly reminding opposition legislators yet again of his popular support.

But after the defections of three rightist parties in his year-old coalition, Barak was left the head of an enfeebled minority government of 42 members, barely a third of the 120-seat legislature.

A motion to topple Barak's wobbly coalition fell seven votes short of a parliamentary majority, of 61, but still more people voted against the government than for it, 54-52. Seven legislators abstained, and seven others were not present.

The prime minister owes his lease on life to support from most Arab members of parliament, who have never been invited to join his government, and to critical abstentions from United Torah Judaism, a religious Orthodox party, and Shinui, a resolutely anti-Orthodox faction.

"Barak is traveling to the summit defeated and alone!" crowed the opposition Likud party in announcing a rally against the peace talks.

"I regret that the person who wanted to be the prime minister of everyone became in just one year the prime minister of almost no one, except maybe himself," Ariel Sharon, the Likud leader, taunted Barak in parliament.

"You don't have a majority in the Knesset," he said. "You don't have the support of the people."

Barak dismissed his critics, and said, "It was the people who sent me and gave me my mandate, and only the people will decide."

Barak had planned to fly directly from Cairo to Washington on Monday, after a morning meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Instead, with his coalition in shambles, he returned from Cairo to address parliament before going on to America.

Barak took a commanding 56 percent of the vote in last year's general election, and since then has consistently maintained support for his peace efforts in opinion surveys here.

Yet that support may be eroding. A poll in one leading newspaper Monday showed just 52 percent backing Barak's participation in the Camp David summit meeting, with 45 percent opposed. And in parliament, his support is razor-thin: If United Torah Judaism and Shinui had joined the no-confidence majority, Barak would be heading Monday night not toward Camp David, but toward new elections. The summit meeting begins today.

Israeli commentators groped for metaphors to describe Barak's political predicament and his seemingly implacable confidence amid the wreckage of his once wide-reaching government.

"Never has an Israeli prime minister set out on such a historic mission with the support of such a pathetic coalition," Hemi Shaleven wrote in Maariv on Monday. "The co-pilots have activated their ejection seats one after the other, and Barak has been left alone, with his hands on the controls and the hysterical passengers in the back."

The Palestinians, meanwhile, watched Monday's parliamentary spectacle with a mixture of cynicism and dismay. Some saw Barak's apparent weakness as a Machievellian maneuver to evade compromise on tough issues like Jerusalem and Jewish settlements.

"Is he really capable of making a peace agreement after the disintegration of his government last night?" asked Mahmoud Dahlan, a member of Arafat's negotiating team.

Khaled al-Khatib, the director-general of the Palestinian Ministry of Information, led a large protest in Gaza Monday against Jewish settlements there and the Israeli troops that are deployed to protect the settlements.

The protest was held near the site of the accidental shooting death of a young Palestinian woman by Israeli soldiers at an army checkpoint two days ago. "This is a symbolic sit-in to send a message to Israeli society, and to the Americans, that the Palestinian people will reject Camp David if the settlements stay," Khatib said.

In Jerusalem, near the prime minister's residence, Natan Scharansky, Barak's interior minister until Sunday, held his own protest, collecting signatures for a petition in favor of a new unity government. Foreign Minister David Levy, who refused to join Barak's Camp David team, echoed the calls for a new coalition.

The prevailing political wisdom Monday was that if the Camp David meeting produces a breakthrough, Barak will fly home and immediately schedule a referendum and new elections, perhaps simultaneously.

But if Camp David hits an impasse, the speculation was that Barak would try to create a unity government embracing Likud as well as his wayward former coalition partners.

Yet in parliament Monday, Barak and Sharon appeared to be going out of their way to scuttle any future collaboration.

Barak had conciliatory words for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and for the Orthodox Jews now arrayed against him. But staring at the Likud bench, he charged that many of his mainstream critics prefer the prospect of war to the possibility of reconciliation with the Arabs.

"These are the same prophets who warned us against Sadat's fraud when he came to visit Jerusalem," Barak said. "These are the same prophets who threatened us with Katyushas on Ashkelon and Kfar Saba when Oslo was signed, and these are the same prophets who dared not leave Lebanon. These are also the same prophets who are unwilling to turn over every stone in an attempt to put an end to the cycle of blood."

Interrupted repeatedly by heckling, the prime minister took the better part of an hour to deliver a speech of 800 words. It is a role Barak seems almost to revel in: His trademark half-smile freezing somewhere between bemusement, disdain and anger, he waited each time for the jeers to subside. With his unscheduled address timed to coincide with the daily 5 p.m. television news shows, some analysts saw his performance as a calculated attempt to draw a contrast with his raucous and bellicose critics.

But to others, it looked simply like Barak had lost control.

"Go to elections," Sharon said, addressing the prime minister. "Don't threaten us, and don't enlist others to threaten us with war and with rising violence, in order to force us into concessions."

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