Even more than Lieberman, we should worry about Barak, warns Khaled Amayreh from occupied Jerusalem Israeli prime minister-designate Benyamin Netanyahu and Labour Party leader Ehud Barak have reached an understanding that would pave the way for the latter to join the Likud-led government, expected to be sworn-in next week. According to the agreement, Barak will remain defence minister and his party will receive a number of other less important portfolios, including agriculture, infrastructure, industry, trade and labour and one minister without portfolio. Politically, the understanding stipulates that Israel will formulate a comprehensive plan for Middle East peace and cooperation, continue peace negotiations with the Palestinians and commit itself to peace accords already signed. The agreement also speaks of "acting against illegal Arab and Jewish building" in the West Bank which may suggest that the next government will step up the virulent practice of demolishing Palestinian homes. Israel has demolished as many as 20,000 Arab homes under a variety of pretexts since it occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967. The Israeli government is also planning to destroy hundreds of homes in occupied East Jerusalem in what one Palestinian leader has described as "a decapitation of Arab demographic presence" in the city. The Palestinian Authority still hopes to make Jerusalem the capital of a prospective Palestinian state. Israeli commentators argue that the Likud- Labour understandings are too generalised to give a clear picture as to the exact partnership between the two parties. However, the "constructive ambiguity" should give both sides a feeling that they got what they want. Barak had said repeatedly that he wouldn't join a right- wing coalition. However, in recent days, he apparently changed his mind despite stiff opposition within his party to joining the Likud coalition, which observers here already label the most right-wing government in Israel's history. The understanding between Barak and Netanyahu is not final, as it must be approved by the Labour Party general assembly which was due to meet to vote on the deal. A solid plurality, perhaps a majority, within Labour is firmly against joining the Likud-led government for ideological reasons, and also because many traditional Labourites see Barak's acceptance to play a "second fiddle" to Netanyahu as an expression of cheap opportunism. This, labour leaders calculate, would seriously harm Labour's image as a progressive party and prospective alternative to right-wing demagogy. Barak himself used to condemn Likud as representing "swinish capitalism". Ophir Pines-Paz is one of the most ardent opponents of Barak and any partnership with the Likud. He says that Netanyahu will only use Barak and whoever will join him from the Labour Party as "a mere fig leaf" to blur and hide the true nature of the next government. "It is completely natural for Barak to want to join the Bibi-Lieberman government," says Pines-Paz, the only MK who left Olmert's government after Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman joined it. "He doesn't have a problem with their ideology. Perhaps you can remind me how many outposts Barak has evacuated so far and how exactly he abided by the Talia Sasson on settlement expansion," he said, referring to an official government report published on 8 March 2005. The report, commissioned by former prime minister Ariel Sharon, was headed by the former head of the State Prosecution Criminal Department, Talia Sasson. On 23 March, Barak's opponents within the Labour Party accused him of "trying to turn Labour into Yisrael Beiteinu" and of "acting as if he got 50 seats in the Knesset, rather than suffering an electoral defeat." According to Haaretz, seven Labour lawmakers including Pines-Paz sent an unprecedented letter to Netanyahu and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, in which they declared that they won't be bound by the understandings reached between Barak and the Likud leader. "This is the first time in the history of the Labour Party that the chairman has set up a coalition negotiating team without a thorough and extensive discussion within the party and without getting the approval of any of the party's organs. It is a gross violation of the party's constitution." The rebels also warned Netanyahu of the consequences of Barak's actions. "You should know that the negotiating team established by the Barak faction within the Labour Party does not enjoy our backing or the backing of any authorised party official. It is unfortunate that the party chairman chose to manage party matters in this way. Given the circumstances, we must inform you that you can't count on our support regarding any agreement that you may reach with Ehud Barak." Seeking to justify his decision to join the Netanyahu government, Barak told fellow Labour lawmakers that his membership in the government would guarantee that it won't go too far to the right. However, this argument is viewed as largely disingenuous and lacking in rectitude. Barak has already shown he agrees with Likud on expanding settlements. Under his authority as defence minister in the last government, settlement expansion in the West Bank continued unabated despite commitments made to the Americans to freeze expansion. According to prominent Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, several new settlements created recently were marketed as "merely new neighbourhoods of existing settlements". In some cases, the new neighbourhoods are more than five kilometres away of the mother settlement. "Who wants to send his children to a kindergarten on the other side of the fence, not to mention the cost of the infrastructure and the services." Eldar asked. In addition, there are signs that Barak is already trying to endear himself to the extreme right-wing parties, such as the settler party, Habayt Hayahudi (Jewish Home) as well as Shas and United Torah Judaism, formerly known as Agudat Yisrael. His role is clearly to act as a facilitator to the fascist- minded and pro-settler parties, to "launder" their manifestly illegal settlements (illegal even by Israeli standards) built on stolen Arab land. Last week, Barak, as defence minister, decided to legalise a new settlement Sansana in the southern Hebron hills, which even the Israeli courts declared to be illegal. Similarly, he refused to uphold a court order to dismantle houses built on stolen Palestinian land in the Ofra settlement in the northern West Bank. In light of this, it is not hard to predict how the Netanyahu-Lieberman-Barak government, backed by settler and extreme religious parties, will function. Using the words of one Israeli journalist, the next government will have a modus operandi based on deception, subterfuge and prevarication. "It will be a government that will claim to be committed to peace while in reality do everything it can to make peace as elusive and as distant as ever."
