Barak shuns dovish past with eye on old job

JERUSALEM — For Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the future seems to be about the past — and how to disown it.

Keen to reclaim the prime ministership he lost in 2001 after just 22 months, he’s cast off the dovish image that defined that brief tenure.

Now, the man who offered the Palestinians unprecedented concessions in his last days in office, only to be spurned, is repackaging himself as a hard-liner to compete with the other former prime minister with an eye on his old job, the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu.

“If he was burnt previously, he is probably reticent now,” said Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “He’s holding back before promising anything.”

Mr. Barak, as head of the center-left Labor Party, could provide key backing and stabilize Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coalition at a time when Israel and the Palestinians are trying once again to reach an elusive peace accord.

He endorses negotiations with the Palestinians, but with a caveat — that Israel move slowly and carefully “to protect our own security interests,” as he recently told party allies.

Having talked compromise — and failed — Mr. Barak is now talking tough. He reportedly dismissed talk of a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal as “fantasy.”

As defense minister, he has not followed through on Mr. Olmert’s pledges to ease roadblocks and other travel restrictions that have made movement in the West Bank a nightmare for Palestinians. He also has not challenged Jewish settlers who have set up rogue outposts in the West Bank.

Even as Mr. Olmert talks of withdrawing from the West Bank, Mr. Barak says Israel should stay in the area for at least 2½ years while it develops a missile defense system.

Mr. Barak, who was in Washington and New York last week on his first official visit since being appointed defense minister in June, turned down an Associated Press request for an interview.

Mr. Barak spent 36 years in the armed forces, becoming Israel’s most decorated soldier and serving as military chief from 1991-95. He joined the government of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and subsequently routed Mr. Netanyahu in 1999 elections, promising to reach a comprehensive Mideast peace.

But the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel in September 2000 capped his political downfall, and he found himself voted out of office by an Israeli public traumatized by the new violence.

Mr. Barak disappeared from politics for years after his drubbing — earning millions as a private consultant and on the lecture circuit — before recapturing the Labor leadership in June. That month, he joined Mr. Olmert’s coalition government as defense minister, making it clear he intends to use the job to try to reclaim the prime ministership.

Elections are scheduled for 2010, but could be moved up if Mr. Olmert’s government crumbles over peace moves, or if corruption investigations force him to leave office. Polls show Mr. Netanyahu would win if elections were held today, but second-place Mr. Barak has been narrowing the gap.