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Gershom Gorenberg: Barak, Stay Home

"Did you notice how the part about quitting politics came out of nowhere?" a philosophy prof I know commented a year ago February, just after Ehud Barak�s election loss and announcement that he was taking a time-out from political life.

"He hadn�t told himself he was going to say it. He was afraid that if he told himself, �himself� might leak it." The prof could transfer to the psychology department: He�d precisely pictured the ex-prime minister�s obsession with secrecy, a large part of his inability to work with people.

These days it seems Barak hasn�t told himself his own political plans. In a prime-time Israel TV interview in early July, he said he was still on the political sidelines. Yet the TV interview itself -- along with his speech the same night to the Labor party convention and his recent interview in the New York Review of Books -- show intense effort to glue his image back together for a comeback. Frankly, that frightens me.

Barak gets a lot of help insisting his performance as prime minister was flawless. Most attention on his brief term focuses on the collapse of the Camp David summit and the outbreak of the intifada. In both Israel and the U.S., fury greets anyone who suggests that only 90 percent of the blame for those events rests on Yasser Arafat, and that Barak might bear 10 percent. That�s understandable: Israel is caught in a brutal conflict, and when you are mobilizing support during war, you don�t want any blurring of who�s the villain and who�s the hero.

But whitewashing Barak�s diplomatic record is also costly. It eases the comeback of a disastrous politician. It promotes despair, because if Barak did everything possible for peace and got an intifada, any further effort to make peace with the Palestinians is pointless; we can only oil our guns and dig graves. The defense of Barak also asks us to turn off our brains. We�re supposed to pretend that his failure in every other task as prime minister says nothing about how he dealt with the Palestinians.

Barak came to power three summers ago promising peace, jobs and an end to Israel�s social divisions. He was reputed to be brilliant. His campaign manual was Daniel Ben-Simon�s book "A Different Country," on how Labor had to reach out to Sephardim, Russian immigrants, Israeli Arabs and others. "Turns out he didn�t get it," Ben-Simon says. "The results were awful." Barak�s promise of "a just division of national resources" evaporated the day he was elected.

Barak received virtually 100 percent of the Israeli Arab vote -- and promptly ignored Arab Knesset members and Arab hopes for social equality. After using the full month and a half granted by law to build a coalition, he emerged with a ludicrous list of cabinet appointments. He made diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami the police minister -- the junior role Labor has traditionally given Sephardi politicians to put them in their place. He made Yossi Beilin, with no legal background, the justice minister -- apparently to keep Beilin, a political rival, from looking too good. The brilliant Barak didn�t get that a prime minister�s success depends on that of his ministers.

Intimidated by the extremism that had led to Yitzhak Rabin�s assassination, Barak tried to buy the support of the National Religious Party. The NRP�s leader became housing minister, and construction of 2,830 new units began in settlements between Barak�s election and Camp David. While Barak promised peace, the country invested in occupation.

Officials near him complained that his schedule was overcrowded because he couldn�t delegate authority. He was incapable of negotiating with his own coalition partners. A crucial example: Before the Camp David summit, says Ben-Simon, Barak rejected Shas leader Eli Yishai�s request that he brief the party�s real king, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, on his plans. Barak refused. But then, Barak was afraid to discuss the issues with his own staff. Both Israeli and U.S. sources say Barak came to Camp David unprepared to deal with key subjects: He�d been afraid that if he held planning meetings, his diplomatic proposals would leak.

We are supposed to believe that Barak�s inability to work with people and develop trust had no role in what happened at Camp David. That is, we are supposed to believe that the skill of the negotiator has no impact on the negotiations. We are also supposed to believe that lack of preparation had no effect, and that the bulldozers and cranes at the settlements had no impact on Palestinian confidence in Barak�s intentions.

Likewise, we are supposed to forget Barak�s demonstrated willingness to be intimidated by the right when we judge his decision to let Ariel Sharon visit the Temple Mount in September 2000. As for what followed: The Or Commission of Inquiry has warned Barak he may be found at fault: for not anticipating riots among Israeli Arabs, for failing to weigh the dangers of using lethal force against rioters, and for doing too little to stop escalation. The Or Commission was not empowered to investigate police use of lethal force at the Temple Mount itself the day after Sharon�s visit, or in the territories in the days that followed. Shall we believe that Barak mishandled the violence inside Israel, but has no responsibility for the explosion in the territories?

I�m sorry. I just can�t believe so many impossible things before breakfast.

Granted that Arafat is intransigent and sly, that he negotiated miserably and threw away his people�s future, that he fanned the intifada when he should have doused it. Grant as well that Barak harmed his own causes most of all. Let us learn from his mistakes so that we can pursue peace better. And let us ask him, please, to tell himself to forget the comeback.