Israel’s Labor Party race leads to runoff

JERUSALEM — Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak will compete against the former head of the secret service to lead Israel’s troubled Labor Party, in a piece of partisan political theater that will determine the shape and survival of the national government.

Barak won the first round of voting in Monday’s party-wide leadership election but failed to reach the required 40% of the vote to avoid a runoff, final results showed today. Ami Ayalon, the dovish former head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, came in second. The runoff will be held in two weeks.

Barak scored 35.6% of the vote, and Ayalon 30.6%. One of the men will replace Labor chief Amir Peretz, who was a distant third.

The Labor Party, a former pillar of Israeli politics that has been on the sidelines of power for most of this decade, is the largest coalition partner of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, leader of the centrist Kadima party. Labor’s new leader will have a critical role in Olmert’s efforts to hold on to office -- and may well lead the battle to oust him.

“I think many people understand that we are, in fact, not just voting on the future of the Labor Party but to a very large extent on the future leadership of the state of Israel,” Ayalon told supporters as he cast his ballot.

Olmert is reeling under the scathing results of an official inquiry of his handling of last summer’s cross-border war with the Islamic militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Many experts believe he will be forced to resign when the inquiry issues its final report this summer.

And a new Labor leader would be waiting in the wings.

Ayalon has said he will withdraw from Olmert’s government unless the prime minister steps aside, a move that could send Olmert to other right-wing parties for support or lead to new elections. Or it could force him out, to be replaced by another senior Kadima official, such as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Barak has indicated he would remain in Olmert’s government, but it is clear he would use the perch to lead Labor into a national election that he hopes would restore him to the office from which he was ejected six years ago.

About 104,000 card-carrying Labor Party members were eligible to vote Monday, and about 65% turned out, officials said.

Whoever wins will replace Peretz, the party chief who is Olmert’s defense minister.

With no military experience to speak of, Peretz, a scrappy union leader of Moroccan heritage, was also harshly criticized for his handling of the war with Hezbollah. He is thus the highest-ranking political casualty so far of that inconclusive conflict.

The Defense Ministry post would also go to the winner of Monday’s contest.

Labor, a center-left party with strong bases in Israel’s kibbutz movement, unions and pro-peace camp, is electing its seventh leader in seven years. It has endured a period of crisis, floundering in its efforts to be effective and unable to advance an agenda -- emerging, as leftist politician Yossi Sarid put it, “bruised and torn.”

“More than a new-old leader,” Sarid said, “the Labor Party needs an old-new backbone.”

The Labor Party race has also marked the surprising comeback of Barak, 65, a highly decorated military officer and cunning political tactician whose tenure as prime minister started with broad hopes for peace but ended in spiraling bloodshed.

Today, many Israelis hold him at least partly responsible for the explosion of violence after failed negotiations with the Palestinians, and for failing to institute wider security measures after a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000.

Barak was toppled as prime minister after 20 months, losing an election in February 2001 to right-wing hawk Ariel Sharon, who remained in power until a devastating stroke last year.

Barak retreated from public life and used the time to amass a significant fortune as a business consultant. The kibbutz-reared Barak now lives in Tel Aviv’s most luxurious skyscraper, something his more leftist opponents harped on.

In the campaign, Barak declined to offer many specifics about ideas or plans but cast himself as the candidate with the experience to lead the nation in war. He also said he was the only leader who could defeat a likely challenge from right-wing politician and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ayalon, 61, portrayed himself as an outsider, saying his relative lack of political experience should be seen as an advantage and a testament to his honest character. In addition to his leadership of the Shin Bet, Ayalon was an admiral who commanded the Israeli navy and was an early advocate of open channels of communication with the Palestinians. Ayalon is gruff but popular for his candor.

Election results showed Ayalon leading among the kibbutzim and in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while Barak got a huge boost from Arab Israeli members of the party.

For Barak and his opponents, the real golden ring is not leadership of a party of diminishing influence, but a return to the pinnacle of Israeli power.

“For most of the candidates in the Labor Party, if not all of them, the party is a necessary unpleasantness on the way to the sought-after title: prime minister,” veteran political columnist Nahum Barnea noted. “They do not have to offer a well-ordered worldview or an agenda. Instead they are offering themselves.”

Also Monday, Kadima threw its support behind elder statesman Shimon Peres as its candidate for the presidency. Israelis are scheduled to vote for a president, a largely ceremonial post, on June 13.

Peres, a former prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate with a notorious knack for losing elections, would restore to the presidency “the stature and respect it deserves,” Olmert said.

The current president, Moshe Katsav, is on a leave of absence facing probable criminal charges of rape and sexual assault of women who worked for him.

If Peres were elected president, it would take him out of the running to replace Olmert as prime minister in the event of his resignation or ouster.

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