HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011787.jpg

/ BARAK / 30

I’d tried not to pay too much attention to newspaper polls during the campaign, perhaps because even the “good” ones, to use Shimon’s phrase, had me with just a narrow lead, with Yitzhik Mordechai’s 10 or 11 percent still likely to prevent outright victory in the first round. But in the second part of May, our internal polling showed things were moving in our direction. In mid-May, they had me above 40 percent. A final batch of internal polls, on the Friday before election day, had me just short of 50 percent. But I told our pollsters that under no circumstances were they to divulge the results to anyone in the campaign team. This wasn’t just because I wanted to guard against complacency. It was because, deep down, still I didn’t trust the numbers.

I retreated to Kochav Yair on Friday evening. On Saturday, two days before the election, I had a surprise visitor, someone I knew from Yitzhik Mordecai’s team. He said he had a letter for me, with terms of a proposal under which Yitzhik would announce an eleventh-hour withdrawal from the race. I still could not be absolutely confident I’d win, at least in the first round. Yitzhik’s pulling out would help. But if I did win, I wanted to start the process of assembling a coalition with a blank slate and an open mind. Doing a deal was not the way to begin. I didn’t accept or open the envelope. “Go back to Yitzhik,” I said. “Tell him, as he knows, that I have a lot of respect for him. But this is a decision that he has to make on his own.”

The next day, less than 24 hours before the polls opened, all of the three other candidates announced they were pulling out. Benny Begin and Azmi Beshara were never going to affect the outcome. But Yitzhik’s withdrawal very possibly would. When he spoke to reporters, he said it had been one of the most difficult decisions he’d had to make, but that he’d concluded he wouldn’t get enough votes to reach his “primary goal” of defeating Bibi. “The prime minister was given a chance and he failed,” he said. “We must give Barak a chance.”

I got up early on May 17, confident we’d done everything we could to put ourselves in a position to win, but also aware, from Shimon’s defeat, that the smallest of details, and the narrowest of margins, might determine the outcome. After the 1996 election, I’d learned of cases where Peres volunteers outside polling stations in the Negev or the north of the country had left early, in order to make sure they’d be back to Tel Aviv in time for the “moment of victory.” Now, I sent out word that all our volunteers must stay in place until the polls had closed. After

316
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011787