Attila Somfalvi-30/05/2007

Attila Somfalvi, (Ynetnews)

"The main mission faced by Ehud Barak and Ami Ayalon in the coming hours is to finalize a "golden deal" with outgoing Labor party head Amir Peretz. The defense minister, who indeed lost the party leadership, proved that although his camp has shrunk in comparison to the previous primaries, it is still a cohesive camp that does not desert its leader at a time of crisis.

Late at night, while still exhausted, Peretz said in a phone conversation that "everyone must remember this is a camp that follows the leader." The message is clear: Following the defeat, Peretz is preparing for the next stage, which is the battle for ensuring his spot among the Labor party's top brass. Despite this, it would be exaggerated to say that Peretz is the big winner of the Labor primaries. True, he was not completely erased off the political map as some predicted, and it is true that he cannot be ignored now. Yet still, 80 percent of Labor voters punished him and showed him the way out. They made it clear to him, unequivocally, that they do not wish to see him at the helm.

On the desk of attorney Eldad Yaniv, the man who led Ehud Barak's primaries campaign, one can find a document that includes one sentence that Yaniv likes in particular. The sentence is "salvation through the slums," and it reflects more than anything else the process Barak went through ahead of his first-round primaries victory. This is a triumph that should not be taken lightly, particularly as we are talking about a politician who several months ago was even trailing behind Ophir Pines in the polls.

Those four words, Yaniv argues, serve to explain the campaign run by Barak, who remained silent in the media, but traveled through every corner of the country in the past few months and appeared before anyone who wanted to hear him. He did all this in a bid to neutralize the great animosity towards him held by many.

He did it without grand TV and radio interviews, without huge articles in the weekend editions of newspapers, and even without responses and denials. Barak engaged in a quiet, dull, exhausting, and at times Sisyphean primaries campaign en route to the result he achieved last night.

Yet make no mistake about it: This still does not guarantee a Barak victory in the second round. The former prime minister still has a long way to go before he wins. Many obstacles are still ahead, and in order to win both him and his people will have to work hard."

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