'Bibi Is Riding High, But Peace Could Win It for Barak'

What are Barak's prospects for winning an election right now?

"Well, it's not quite set in stone that an election is imminent, despite everything that's been said. If you look at what's really happened, it may be that Barak has simply bought himself more time. He could still get the national unity government for which he'd been pushing — Ariel Sharon has certainly expressed renewed interest in that idea. And instead of a parliamentary election, Barak could still take the option of resigning himself, which would mean that a new election would be held only for the post of prime minister. That would ensure that he gets to run directly against Sharon or a younger Likud leader such as Silvan Shalom, rather than against the more popular Bibi Netanyahu. That's because the constitution requires that the prime ministerial candidate in such an election be a member of parliament, which Bibi isn't right now.

"It's also possible that Barak's own party, which has been getting more and more upset with him, will deny him its nomination. Some leading figures are now leaking to the press about Barak being challenged for leadership of the Labor party, possibly by parliamentary speaker Avram Burg, who has the advantage of being known as a religious man."

So it's not certain that an election would be a Barak-Netanyahu rematch?

"That will be decided in the next month. One of the factors that may determine whether Barak is challenged for leadership is whether Bibi is going to run. Nobody wants to run against Bibi, who right now beats everyone else in the polls. Many powerful figures in the Likud detest Bibi, but they know that he's the one who can win. They see him as having left the party in a political and organizational mess, and now, just as they're bringing down Barak's government, he steps back in to claim the spoils. Many Likud members of parliament and branch organizers feel that way. But they also feel that they're unlikely to get back into power with Sharon in charge. With Bibi, they believe, it's a done deal — which, of course, it isn't. There's a long time between now and an election in which Israelis can be reminded what a mess Netanyahu made as prime minister."

What about Sharon's renewed interest in a unity government — is that just a maneuver to hold off Bibi's challenge for Likud leadership?

"Yes, that's exactly what it is. Of course he also genuinely believes that he can help, and that it's not going to be good for Israel to have an election going on at a time of crisis. But it is very much colored by the fact that he knows if he goes up against Bibi, he's going to end up losing, and at best end up being foreign minister."

Many analysts are saying Barak's only chance of winning is if he has a peace deal with the Palestinians to take on the campaign trail. How realistic is this?

"His advisers had been thinking that way for some time, although they weren't expecting it to happen this way. They'd hoped to first make a peace deal, and then call new elections in which they could present it as a choice between peace and war. If he has an agreement with the Palestinians, it's very realistic that he could win. No matter what people said at the time, if he'd come back from Camp David with a done deal, and sold it as a choice between voting for peace and voting for war, he would probably have won an election.

"The big question is whether he can get a peace deal out of Arafat. From where Arafat sits, Barak looks desperate, and that means the Palestinian leader can push for a more favorable deal than the one he was offered at Camp David. If Arafat had a plan, it's certainly falling into place. So just as the right wing in Israel kicked out Bibi and then ended up with a left-of-center government instead, so this time the right may have forced Barak to go out and offer Arafat even more than he did before — and if he gets a deal, he can take it to the electorate and win."