The Breaking of the Barak Myth

Ehud Barak sat opposite Israel’s TV Channel One diplomatic reporter this past Monday night and was asked if he had made a mistake in his early troop redeployment last week of an army outpost in southern Lebanon. Barak, Israel’s prime minister and, by his own election propaganda, Israel’s most-decorated warrior, smiled and niftily avoided the trap. “I never look back but always to the future,” he said. The viewers, left in the vacuum of a politician’s self-enhancement, gained an insight into what is perhaps the empty void that now stands at the top of the country’s administration.

Barak may be in a process of political deconstruction. His most recent problems began when, despite his magnanimous gesture of altering the status of three Arab villages overlooking Jerusalem, gunshots rang out in Ramallah and Gaza. Bullets from rifles delivered by Israel wounded Israeli soldiers and sent civilians in nearby Jewish civilian communities scurrying for cover.

In his May 15 Knesset speech, Barak sarcastically referred to the knights of the Hasmonean Tunnel and Joseph’s Tomb, the bloody incidents of September 1996. Those disturbances were former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s responsibility. But within hours, Barak’s own shining armor was bestained as the sounds and pictures of the Palestinian violence were broadcast on television screens. Stunned, Barak assumed an assertive stance but, nevertheless, the shooting continued and, at week’s end, one soldier had been shot in the head and an infant was torched by a firebomb in Jericho.

Left with little choice, Barak’s plans were adjusted. His secret Stockholm channel of final-status negotiations was interrupted, and his representatives were called home to Jerusalem. More ominously for a politician, he is being threatened with internal coalition desertions, and the transfer of the three villages was put on hold. And then, with an echo of Jeremiah’s prophecy, the troubles began in the north.

For months, Barak has informed all and sundry that Israel will leave the south Lebanon buffer zone, with or without an agreement. Israel’s populace assumed that in either case their security concerns and those of their allies--the soldiers of Gen. Antoine Lahad’s South Lebanon Army--were being taken into consideration in the planning of the retreat. We may never know exactly what those plans were because, in the past few days, the several hundred-strong Hezbollah terror militia sprung a surprise on the brilliant strategist who is Israel’s prime minister and defense minister as well.

Talks on Israel’s withdrawal to the international border had been held with U.S. officials, United Nations’ diplomats and other Middle East players. Yet for all the planning, the concept of an orderly rearrangement along the border collapsed as did the SLA units that, with survivalist cunning, smelled the developments that Barak overlooked.

At present, fully 70% of Kiryat Shemona’s population has left the town and the rest are in underground shelters. Upward of 3,000 SLA personnel and family members are knocking on Israel’s gates. The new security fence is being built only meters from homes at Metulla and other kibbutzim along the Galilee panhandle. And the Hezbollah has announced further territorial demands: the lands upon which sit seven agricultural communities and the military base at Shaba, on the Mt. Hermon slopes. In other words, the Hezbollah struggle is far from over, and the Syrians are still demanding all of the Golan Heights and the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Critics have pointed out that for all his bluster, Barak failed last month to use effectively the military might he has at his disposal when Katyusha rockets fell, during the day, on Kiryat Shemona. Moreover, by denigrating the worth of the South Lebanon buffer-zone, his response to future attacks on Israel can only be at the risk of a major confrontation with Syria, something that has been avoided until now. Barak hasn’t solved the problem of border attacks but perhaps has only cleared the decks for a better shot.

Barak’s “brilliance,” so skillfully nurtured during his election campaign, still needs to be tested. The fear, though, is that the price for his failure will be paid by those who are less able to do so, even if they enthusiastically voted for him a year ago.