Fear Is the Only Ally in Barak’s Longshot Campaign

Abandoned by supporters and crippled by opponents, caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak is waging a longshot battle for reelection, with virtually his only hope being that he can scare Israelis into voting for him.

Barak, who swept decisively into office 20 months ago, today lags so far behind in polls that most Israelis believe the gap cannot be closed ahead of the Feb. 6 election.

But he soldiers on, with the stubborn determination that has characterized his leadership and angered his allies. He reads the polls, though, and there is a sadness and air of resignation to his public appearances these days.

At each stop in this halfhearted campaign, the 58-year-old prime minister reminds listeners of who his opponent is and warns that Ariel Sharon will bring catastrophic war, not the peace whose pursuit has been the cornerstone of Barak’s vision.

“If we must face war,” he told an unusually enthusiastic group of high school students in Tel Aviv last week, “is it not more important that you know you have a government that tried everything to avoid war? Not a government that embarks recklessly on military adventurism.”

Israel’s most highly decorated military hero and former commander of its army, Barak has proved an inept politician and poor communicator. Disillusionment with him is widespread and heartfelt and made deeper by the high expectations that his election stirred.

A year and a half of unsuccessful peace negotiations, and waffling on key domestic issues, alienated the three main constituencies that guaranteed Barak’s success in the 1999 vote: the left, immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Arab citizens of Israel.

The last four months of violent clashes with Palestinians pushed the electorate to the right and dramatized for many Israelis the precariousness of their well-being. In contrast to the 1999 race, personal security suddenly has been thrust into the forefront as the greatest worry facing the public. Partly because of the violence, Israel’s economy also has begun to falter.

Barak gets the blame.

Even his most hailed achievement, pulling Israel out of the mire of Lebanon and ending two decades of costly occupation, is now recast by critics as a mistake. It made Israel look weak, they say, and invited Palestinians to launch a revolt in which about 375 people, including about 60 Israelis, have been killed.

Many of those who still support Barak say they will cast their ballots holding their noses.

Barak in turn puts the blame on a fractious Knesset, or parliament, that diverted attention from his agenda and blocked his initiatives. The system that allowed him to be elected without a parliamentary majority forced him into a corner and an early election, depriving him of the time to fulfill his promises, he argues.

“A year and a half is not four years,” he told an audience in Nazareth. “You plant an olive tree and even if you jump up and down, it will not bear fruit within weeks. You cannot ask a government to do in one and a half years what you expected in four.”

At Tel Aviv’s New High School on Tuesday, Barak received a rare, warm welcome. The students, most of whom are too young to vote, whooped and chanted his name as he dashed into the bleachers for quick handshakes and hugs.

Vered Bialer, a teacher in the audience, said she will vote for Barak. But to hear her explain it, her vote will be more against Sharon than for Barak.

“I am afraid of Sharon,” the 40-year-old literature teacher said. “It’s not that I like or dislike Barak. It is more complex than that. I admire his courage and his mental strength. But Sharon loves war, and he is dangerous.”

Outside, the real debate raged. Supporters of Barak and Sharon stood in puddles and shook fists at one another.

“You do not want peace! You are not willing to pay the painful price that peace requires!” Barak supporter Ayelet Gundar screamed at a rival.

“We made the concessions and look what it got us! You call this peace?” retorted Sharon supporter Yossi Mizrahi.

“Sharon is a war criminal! He will not be accepted anywhere,” continued the 18-year-old Gundar.

“That is incitement!” countered the 32-year-old Mizrahi. “We wake up in the morning and we don’t know what will happen. We are afraid. I’m afraid to send my wife and kids on the bus. . . . [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat is your enemy. Not Sharon.”

Polls show that many Israelis who back Sharon believe that he will take Israel to war but support him anyway. They believe that the Likud Party leader’s iron fist is what is needed now to put down the Palestinian rebellion.

Belatedly, Barak has sought to win back some of the Israeli Arab vote. Most of nearly 1 million Arab voters sided with Barak in 1999; today, even though Sharon is reviled in the Arab world, the vast majority of Israeli Arabs plan to boycott the election or cast a blank ballot.

They were already disappointed with the acknowledged failure of Barak’s government to keep his promise to fight the discrimination and poverty that plague the Arab community. Then, in October, Israeli police opened fire on Israeli Arabs who were demonstrating in sympathy with the Palestinian uprising, killing 13 people. It was a devastating act against a people who had remained loyal to Israel.

The government opened an investigation, but Barak has refused to apologize. In a Nazareth hotel last week, Barak received a cool reception from a handpicked crowd from the Arab community. Children were dressed in Barak T-shirts and waved posters with his photograph, but the emotion seemed forced.

Outside, scores of Israeli Arabs demonstrated against Barak and those who would vote for him. “Traitors! Shame!” they screamed at people who were arriving for the meeting. “You have forgotten the blood of our martyrs!” They spat on cars and brandished Palestinian flags.

“This is a very difficult decision,” said Adel Kadah, a youth counselor from the Arab village of Kafr Manda, near Nazareth, who came to hear Barak. “Do I vote for Barak, who killed my people? Or Sharon, who killed my brothers in Lebanon?”

Afterward, Kadah said he was not impressed with the prime minister’s speech but would vote for him “in the interest of peace.”

Barak has sought to portray Sharon, the 72-year-old architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the right-wing hawks around him as too extreme for Israel and the modern world.

“Sharon will use the army to continue to occupy the [Palestinian] territories,” he told a group of military-age Israeli youth in Tel Aviv. “We will use the army to leave, to get out once and for all.”

Those on the left who have abandoned him accuse Barak of mishandling the peace process. They cite his military commander style, secretive and arrogant. He has failed to consult political allies.

In fact, some on the left are backing former Prime Minister Shimon Peres as an alternative to Barak, an idea that the former has not discouraged. A party can replace its candidate any time up to four days before the election.

Support for Barak was further eroded, both on the left and among immigrant voters, when he failed to make good on a promise to reduce the influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews over the running of the state. Supporters were dismayed to see Barak make deals with the Shas Party and backtrack on forcing students at yeshivas, or religious schools, to perform military service required of most young adults in Israel.

To win back those past supporters, Barak is again promising a “secular revolution.” Speaking to Russian voters in the coastal city of Ashdod, he condemned an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who had questioned the Jewish faith of immigrants and labeled Arabs as snakes.

Primarily with television ads, Barak is confessing to his electorate that he has made mistakes. And, in ads and speeches that contrast with Sharon’s inattention to detail, Barak outlines the peace plan that he would continue to pursue. He lists the “red lines”--the bottom-line demands to which he will not concede, such as the Palestinian position that refugees should be allowed to return to Israel--while also insisting that the interests of both sides in the peace talks be taken into consideration.

“Our control over another people is a cancer, and a cancer must be excised surgically,” Barak said. “We must deal with this ticking bomb. . . . Otherwise, we will have a kind of apartheid state. We are here, they are there. We must separate. But it is preferable to do this with an agreement.”