Barak's hopes drowning in the tears of two tribes

JERUSALEM - Ehud Barak, Israel's Prime Minister and most decorated soldier, is an expert in the tactics of war.

He fought hand-to-hand with Palestinian guerrillas, stormed a hijacked plane and coordinated raids in faraway places. But the battle now to save his political life is as complex as any he has faced.

His latest theatre of combat bears little resemblance to the Middle East danger zones into which he ventured as an Israeli commando. It is a palm-dotted hotel with a man-made beach overlooking the deceptively tranquil waters of the Red Sea.

In this holiday resort, tucked into Egypt's eastern flank just over Israel's southern border, the Prime Minister's team has been on an 11th-hour mission to extract enough from the Palestinians to give him a chance of avoiding electoral defeat on February 6.

But early this week the talks at Taba were suspended after the deaths of two Israeli restaurateurs and resumed only yesterday after their funerals.

Motti Dayan, aged 29, and Etgar Zeituni, 34, went with an Israeli-Arab friend to Tulkarm, a Palestinian town. There, they were abducted by three armed Palestinians, driven away, shot through the head and tossed out of the car. The Israeli-Arab was allowed to go free.

The slaying of the cousins - owners of a Tel Aviv cafe and sushi bar called Yuppies - who ventured in to the West Bank to buy plant pots delivered a shuddering blow to one of Barak's key constituencies.

Secular, left-leaning, cosmopolitan Israelis expressed confusion and anger at the attack, which struck at the centre of their heartland: Sheinkin St, Israel's famed equivalent of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, where the pair ran their cafe.

The Prime Minister is depending on the support of such people if he is to defeat Ariel Sharon, the 72-year-old former general and resurgent Likud leader.

Barak is at least 16 points behind Sharon: polls have placed him up to 20 points in arrears.

Barak's 19 months in office will be chalked up in Israel as a disaster which saw the start of a second Palestinian intifada, in which nearly 400 lives have been lost - mostly Arabs, but more than 50 of them Israelis. His only significant achievement - the withdrawal of Israel's troops from its ineffectual war in south Lebanon - will be dwarfed by the bloodshed of the past four months.

Even if his negotiating team succeeds in getting a deal, his survival remains in doubt. The most Israel can expect to extract from Yasser Arafat is a framework agreement, setting the basis for a final peace treaty. It is far from clear whether this will convince an embittered electorate to allow him a second chance.

Sheinkin St is a haven for easy-going trend-setting young bohemians in a country with its fair share of bigotry and dogma. It is the acknowledged font of Israeli fashion, the core of the hip Western consumer portion of the nation's soul.

But following the killings, the street was awash with confusion, anger and indecision.

This was not the slaying of Israeli soldiers or little-loved zealous Jewish settlers living on occupied land in places where most Israelis never venture. The two men were ordinary people, keen to make their business a success, whose only mistake - if their friends are to be believed - was naivety.

"This is just unbelievable," said Yair Matalon, a 35-year-old interior designer who was a friend of Zeituni. "He was a Barak voter, and very pro-Arab. All he wanted to do was renovate his restaurant."

Matalon voted for Barak in 1999, but he is not sure how he will cast his ballot this time.

Nor is Gloria Eliahu, 40, manager of a clothes store called Bullets over the road from Yuppies. "People are really burning with anger inside, but they don't know what to do. Now I just don't know how to vote ... All of Israel is thinking that maybe Sharon would make a difference."

The street is a narrow, tree-lined avenue dotted with boutiques selling designer labels, herbal remedies and hemp clothing and with geranium-filled balconies and terrace cafes. Until now, the intifada, which has smouldered away on the other side of the 1967 Green Line, has seemed light years apart. So has the rhetoric of the rising Israeli right wing, and the tub-thumping autocracy of ultra-Orthodoxy.

The area exudes tolerance. It is the kind of neighbourhood that cheered heartily when the brashly hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu was sent packing from office, making way for what the Israeli left hoped would be a Government genuinely committed to making peace. It is solid Barak territory. Or rather, was.

Outside Yuppies, Sharon's supporters - seizing on the tragedy with ruthless, indecent speed - were plastering campaign stickers on the windows. A burly middle-aged man was bellowing: "Wake up you leftists. You are nuts. Next time it will be you. Vote Sharon. Vote Sharon. Come to your senses."

These were sentiments shared by at least one of the two victims' neighbours. "It is mind-boggling that we in Israel have to put up with this sort of bullshit from the Palestinians," said Richard Zvwling, a 55-year-old carpenter. "What level are we working on here? This is tribal insanity. When we divide Jerusalem, how are we going to get along with these people?"

His mind is already made up about the election. Sharon has his vote.

This is a staggering reversal of fortune. Just over a year ago, Barak was Israel's most popular Prime Minister since the 1960s.

The country was still relieved that the seedy era of Netanyahu was over, replaced by the arrival of an upright former chief-of-staff of the armed forces. The word went around that Barak was so committed to his election promises - 300,000 new jobs, peace with Syria and the Palestinians, an end to Israel's deep social rifts and so on - that he carried them around in a laminated card in his top pocket.

But as his pledges evaporated, so did his popularity. By last March, subversive muttering began to pour out from the upper echelons of the Labour Party. They complained about the Prime Minister's arrogance, his political inexperience, his refusal to consult others, his bad handling of the Knesset, his assumption that only he knew how to solve every problem. He was behaving like a general, not a bridge-building politician.

Even before the Palestinian uprising sent Barak's ratings into nosedive, the ground was slipping beneath his feet; amazingly, Netanyahu was rising up the popularity polls.

With less than a fortnight to polling day, the task facing Barak could scarcely be more daunting. He and his campaign advisers must find a way swiftly to win back alienated voters.

These include Israeli Arabs who are furious about the killing of 13 of their number by police at the start of the intifada. Secular Israel has been sickened by Barak's willingness to cave in to the extortionate demands of ultra-Orthodox party Shas - the price Barak paid for building a highly unstable, and ultimately doomed, coalition.

The left-led peace camp has watched in alarm as he carried on building settlements in the occupied territories - a strategy that not only belied his election promise to divert settlement money to more worthy social causes, but destroyed relations with the Palestinian leadership. And, terrified by the outburst of Palestinian violence on their doorstep, middle-of-the-road Israelis are veering rightwards into the beefy embrace of Sharon.

Barak is doing what he can. His television ads concentrate on attacking Sharon as "too extreme for Israel" and - unusually - include an apology for his failure to live up to his social programme.

It is likely that Barak, famously stubborn, is hoping that the Palestinian leadership will lend him a helping hand in order to keep out Sharon. The latter's efforts to market himself to Israeli voters as a kind old former warrior now bent on making "peace with security" does not wash with Arafat's people.

They will recall a man who poured money into building Jewish settlements on their land, a disgraced Defence Minister whose negligence led to the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Chatilla.

Yet they also know the deep dislike in which Barak is held on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. Any step they make to save the Israeli Premier in the next few days will require much caution.

- HERALD CORRESPONDENT

Herald Online feature: Middle East

Map of the Middle East

UN: Information on the Question of Palestine

Israel's Permanent Mission to the UN

Palestine's Permanent Observer Mission to the UN

Middle East Daily

Arabic News

Arabic Media Internet Network

Jerusalem Post

Israel Wire

US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process