Word: rabins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Eventually, the unorthodox commando rose to be head of military intelligence, then deputy Chief of Staff, before taking full charge as army chief in 1991. When Labor's Yitzhak Rabin, himself once Chief of Staff, was elected Prime Minister in 1992, he began to groom the like-minded Barak as his successor...
Even while seeking friends, Rabin and Barak never shirked from striking enemies hard. Barak likes to call it "killing the mosquitoes while draining the swamp," and his army packed a powerful swat. To suppress the Palestinian uprising against occupation, he sent undercover units into the West Bank and Gaza Strip to hunt down underground leaders; human-rights groups called them death squads. To quell terrorist attacks, he supported the 1992 deportation to Lebanon of 415 Palestinian Hamas militants, a harsh collective punishment that inflamed international opinion and was in time reversed. In 1993, as part of Israel's unavailing struggle...
...months after retiring from the army, in 1995, Barak entered politics as Rabin's Interior Minister. When Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing zealot that November, Shimon Peres, the successor, quickly made Barak Foreign Minister. But the moment Peres lost to Netanyahu in the 1996 election, Barak jumped in to take over as party chief, rankling Labor leaders, who regarded the former general as an upstart...
...assumption that the peace process is better off without Benjamin Netanyahu than on an understanding of who Barak is," says TIME Jerusalem bureau chief Lisa Beyer. "Barak is very hawkish. He's not an enthusiastic peacenik and, as military chief of staff, actually acted as a brake on Yitzhak Rabin in the initial stages of the peace process." And it was domestic issues, rather than peace, that formed the basis of the Labor party leader's challenge to Netanyahu...
Barak's status as an Israeli war hero at the head of the country's pro-peace party raises the temptation to liken him to the legendary soldier-statesman Rabin. "It's an understandable comparison, particularly since Rabin chose Barak as his long-term successor," says Beyer. "But Rabin went boldly out ahead of Israeli public opinion with the confidence generated by a long and distinguished military and political career. Barak is only starting out on his political career, and he's unlikely to be prepared to take similar risks." He may be no Yitzhak Rabin, but with the peace...