Ex-PM Barak said to have discussed Labor leadership bid

Former prime minister Ehud Barak reportedly agreed to an initiative that would have seen him contend for the leadership of the Labor Party, but the plan fell through when other candidates refused his demand that they drop out of the race.

According to a Channel 2 news report on Saturday, Barak consented to a proposal by Labor MK Manuel Trajtenberg, by which Trajtenberg would encourage some of the other contenders to quit the race and throw their support behind Barak to be the party’s candidate for prime minister.

Barak is said to have tentatively agreed to the idea, leading Trajtenberg to approach a number of the candidates in order to gauge their support for the plan. However, most of the candidates reportedly refused to consider the option, and the proposal failed.

Barak’s reported interest in the leadership of the Labor Party comes despite a number of recent denials by the former prime minister that he was weighing a return to politics, including in January when he said he had no plans return to political life or challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the premiership.

Over the past year, the freshly bearded 75-year-old former politician has become an outspoken critic of Netanyahu, with his diatribes against the prime minister and his governing coalition on Twitter and television prompting speculation that Barak was preparing to throw his hat in the ring.

Barak was the IDF’s longest-serving chief of staff and the country’s most decorated soldier, before becoming prime minister in 1999 after defeating Netanyahu in elections.

Following his defeat in 2001 to the late Ariel Sharon, Barak temporarily retired from politics, but returned to the Labor Party in 2005. From 2007 to 2013 he served as defense minister, the last four years of which Netanyahu was prime minister.

In 2011 he split from Labor along with four other MKs, forming the short-lived Independence Party in order to remain in Netanyahu’s coalition despite the objection of most of Labor. The party was effectively disbanded upon Barak’s retirement from politics in 2013.

Last month, Labor announced its final list of candidates for its July 4 leadership primaries.

Labor, which along with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party comprises the opposition Zionist Union faction, will field a crowded slate of nine candidates for the upcoming primary: current party chairman Isaac Herzog, former party leader and current MK Amir Peretz, MK Erel Margalit, MK Omer Barlev, former environmental minister Avi Gabbay, former IDF general Amiram Levin, social activist Hod Krovi, Ono Academic College Prof. Avner Ben-Zaken and ultra-Orthodox activist Dina Dayan.

If no candidate passes the 40 percent threshold in the July 4 vote, a runoff will be held on July 13.

A Channel 2 survey broadcast last month gave the Zionist Union 12 seats if elections were to be held now, half of its current 24 and far behind the ruling Likud party’s 28 projected seats.

Since 1995, Labor has had a new chairman at an average of nearly once every two years and if Herzog were to lose it would mark an astonishing eleventh change of leadership in two decades

After Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, Shimon Peres succeeded him. Peres was replaced by Barak in 1997 after losing the general election the year before to Netanyahu. Barak was replaced by Binyamin Ben-Eliezer in 2001 after Barak’s election loss to Likud’s Sharon. Amram Mitzna defeated Ben-Eliezer for party leader in 2002, but was himself soon replaced by Peres after losing to Sharon’s Likud in 2003. Peretz defeated Peres for the party leadership in 2005, then lost to a reinvigorated Barak in 2007. Barak abandoned the party in 2011, triggering a leadership race won by Shelly Yachimovich, who then lost the top spot just two years later to Herzog.

Raoul Wootliff and Marissa Newman contributed to this report.