Ehud Barak
(1942 - )
Ehud Barak was born in 1942 in Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon.
He began his IDF career at the age of 17 and served as a commander in both the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War.
Some of his more celebrated army exploits included dressing up as a woman in order to infiltrate Beirut with his commando team, in an undercover mission which resulted in the assassination of three PLO leaders. In a later mission, he commanded an operation to storm a hijacked Belgian airliner in 1972, and succeeded in overpowering the terrorists. In 1976 Barak again commanded a successful mission to rescue hostages at a Ugandan airport.
At the peak of his military career Barak was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and four other citations for bravery and excellence. However, Barak did not confine himself to military achievements, but also helped to cement a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, and to push forward negotiations with Syria.
In 1995 Barak decided to commit to a career in politics and joined Yitzchak Rabin's government, later serving under Shimon Peres as foreign minister.
Eventually Barak won the leadership of the Labor Party from Peres. He subsequently achieved a decisive victory over PM Netanyahu in the 1999 elections by promising reform on social and economic issues, and a re-energizing of the Palestinian peace talks which had been frozen under Netanyahu.
Sceptical of Oslo, Barak nevertheless supports the peace process in principle and has made enormous efforts to achieve its goals. After his election, he moved quickly to resume negotiations with Yasser Arafat, and followed through on his commitment to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon.
In July 2000 Barak met Arafat at Camp David for final negotiations in advance of the September deadline for the conclusion of the peace accord. He offered more concessions to Arafat at this summit than any Israeli Prime Minister had ever done, but Arafat was still not satisfied in his demands for total Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and the right of return for a massive number of Palestinian refugees.
The summit was a failure. Barak's political career was severely wounded as a result, and he came under immediate attack from opposition parties. The already fractious and divided Knesset became even more mutinous, and the sudden outbreak of the "Al Aqsa Intifada" in September prompted demands that Barak set up an emergency government with Likud.
Surprising those who expected him to dissolve the Knesset and call for general elections in November, Barak instead issued an abrupt announcement of his resignation, called for a Prime Ministerial election, and said he intended to run as the Labor Party's candidate.
David Ben-Gurion
Moshe Sharett
Levi Eshkol
Golda Meir
Menachem Begin
Yitzhak Shamir
Yitzchak Rabin
Shimon Peres
Benjamin Netanyahu
Ehud Barak
Ariel Sharon
From the Encyclopaedia Judaica CD-ROM Edition
(c) Judaica Multimedia (Israel) Ltd. and Keter Publishing House. All Rights Reserved.
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