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/ BARAK / 19

Chapter Nineteen

A few hours before Haim Ramon introduced his no-confidence resolution, he
came to see me in my office in the Knesset. He was worried. Not about the vote,
but about what would come after. “Ehud, I’m sure we can topple the government,”
he told me. “But only you know whether we’re ready – whether you’re ready – to
defeat Bibi in an election.”

“I’m ready,” I said. “We are going to win.”

Few agreed. In fact, there had been times during my first year-and-a-half as
Labor leader when I wondered if I’d be able to hang on to the job. I was in charge
of a party whose grassroots were on the left. I was, by intellect and instinct, a
pragmatist and a centrist. I did share Labor’s vision of a socially just and
democratic Israel. Especially after seeing far-right rabbis egg on the fanaticism that
ultimately killed Yitzhak Rabin, I felt strongly that we needed to separate
organized religion from our day-to-day politics. But I’d been raised with a deeper
respect for our Jewish traditions than many on the left. Right after Yitzhak’s
murder, I’d gone to see Zevulun Hammer, the leader of the National Religious
Party. It had been part of both Labor and Likud governments ever since 1948,
though not Rabin’s. The NRP, too, had been drifting steadily rightward. But it still
basically subscribed the idea of a strong, democratic Israel under the rule of law. I
wanted to bring the NRP back into the government under Peres, as part of the
widest possible political alliance against the assassination and the campaign of
hatred that had fostered it. Sadly that didn’t happen, in part because of the anger
against all Orthodox politicians after Rabin’s murder. Yet in my readiness to
engage politically with Orthodox leaders who did not reject the very idea of peace
negotiations – whether in the NRP, or the increasingly influential Sephardi
religious party, Shas – I was outside Labor’s mainstream, and its comfort zone.

On my approach to peace as well, I differed from many on the left. Though I
was determined to pursue any realistic avenue to negotiations, I was convinced that
security considerations had to be paramount in what we were prepared to give up
or accept in negotiations. I was cautious about ceding too much too soon, in case
the Palestinians or the Syrians proved either unequal to, or uninterested in, making
the hard decisions required for peace. That was an approach with, like Yitzhak

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