Barak and Ayalon Vie for Labor Leadership

Israel’s Labor Party voted in a runoff leadership election yesterday pitting former prime minister Ehud Barak against ex- intelligence chief Ami Ayalon, a race that may help decide Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s future.

Opinion polls forecast a close contest with a slight edge to Barak, who won a first round last month, ousting Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Labor’s leader for the past year.

Left-of-center Labor, the main partner of Olmert’s centrist Kadima party in the coalition government, is holding a runoff for the first time because none of the original five candidates crossed a required 40 percent threshold in the first round.

Barak and Ayalon, both former military leaders, have called on Olmert to resign after an official report criticized his handling of a war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon last year, and could force his ouster and an early national election.

But neither has said they would immediately bolt Olmert’s coalition once elected, and may give him breathing space at least until the commission issues a final report due in August.

Labor ministers seem unwilling to risk their posts in a major coalition realignment or in an early election which opinion polls suggest would now favor former premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party.

In a survey published as the polls opened for some 103,000 Labor Party members, Israel’s Channel 10 television predicted a victory for Barak with 46 percent to 39 percent for Ayalon.

But a poll in the business daily Globes found the two in a statistical dead heat, with 51.5 percent for Barak to 48.5 percent for Ayalon.

Many Israelis at a Jerusalem polling station said they voted for Barak, a former general and commando as well as premier, as the politician they felt best placed to bring Labor back to power, a position the party lost six years ago.

“At the end of the day, Barak and Ayalon are much the same, but I chose Barak because he has the necessary experience to win,” retired bus driver Avraham Lemel, 81, said.

Some preferred Ayalon, a former peace activist, as best placed to handle the diplomatic challenges Israel faces in attempts to renew peace talks with the Palestinians and Syria.

“He’s a successful man who can provide a ray of hope to us and the Palestinians, at a time we need it most,” Yaffa Koslov, a 58- year-old dietician, said of Ayalon.

Both Barak and Ayalon are more popular in Israel than Olmert, whose popularity has plummeted to the single digits.

Barak seemed confident as he voted north of Tel Aviv. “Tonight we open a new chapter. Only I can unite the party and defeat Netanyahu,” he said.

Ayalon urged whomever won to unify the party’s ranks.

The Labor polls close at 9 pm (1800 GMT), when Israeli media will release the results of exit polls. Final results may not be published until early this morning.

A former head of the navy and the Shin Bet security service until his retirement in 2000, Ayalon worked as a peace activist and was elected to parliament for the first time a year ago.

Ayalon, 61, had been favored to defeat Barak in yesterday’s voting after Peretz, the outgoing leader, threw his support behind him. But some key players later swung to Barak.

Barak, 65, a former military chief and commando, stepped down as prime minister in 2001 after a Palestinian uprising erupted and peace talks collapsed. He has since had a successful business career.

Agencies

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