Word: barak
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...Israel's doves opted to back Ehud Barak, although the strength of the challenge by Shimon Peres suggests they're not exactly bullish about the prime minister. The leftist Meretz party ended Peres's hopes late Thursday, by declining to nominate him as a candidate in Israel's prime ministerial election on February 6. That's good news for Barak, whose supporters have been pleading with Meretz to support the prime minister so as to avoid splitting the peace camp, although the strength of the challenge by arch-dove Peres bodes ill for Barak's efforts to regain the confidence...
...While Barak was never going to back out of the race, opinion polls certainly gave Peres the right to throw his hat in the ring: Despite carrying a "loser" label after having been beaten by Netanyahu in 1996 and losing a parliamentary vote earlier this year for the ceremonial position of president, current polls give Peres a better chance than Barak of beating Sharon. Moreover, Israelis rate him as the best man for the job of making peace with the Palestinians. But polls, as Peres himself once noted, are like perfume - they should be smelled, but not swallowed. Israeli voters...
...Sharon will hammer Barak on the breakdown of the peace process, accusing him of dangerous naïveté and of being an amateurish negotiator. Any new peace agreement that Barak manages to cobble together before President Clinton leaves the White House will be pooh-poohed by the hawkish former general, who'll counsel caution and insist on slowing things down...
...Sharon will wage pretty much the same campaign as Benjamin Netanyahu would have, although the former prime minister's disastrous first term would have offered a bigger target for Barak's attack dogs. Instead, they'll blame Sharon for the Lebanon war, which Barak ended last June in a move that was welcomed by Israelis across partisan lines. And they'll charge that the methods that have earned Sharon the nickname "The Bulldozer" are unlikely to bring peace. But Sharon's team will hammer Barak on the breakdown of the peace process, accusing him of dangerous...
...Barak, of course, is not naïve enough to believe he can get a final peace deal in the next four to five weeks, despite the last-ditch effort by President Clinton Wednesday to interest both sides in a comprehensive U.S. settlement proposal that would give the Palestinians 90 percent of the lands occupied by Israel in 1967, and split sovereignty over Jerusalem in a complex formula. Nobody is particularly optimistic about the deal flying at this late stage. And besides, it may be only a matter of weeks before "The Bulldozer" is in charge...