My Country, My Life, By Ehud Barak
Macmillan, £25
An unexpectedly bearded Ehud Barak looks out from the dust cover of a book big enough to chronicle the very full life of a man who has been director of Israel military intelligence, IDF chief of staff, prime minister and leader of the Labour Party, and defence minister in governments headed by right-wing prime ministers Olmert and Netanyahu (the latter being one to whom he is vigorously, even bitterly, opposed politically and philosophically).
There is scarcely one of Israel’s security or military operations of the past four decades in which Barak has not been involved and he relates them well, illumining the doubts, anxieties and hard decisions that leadership demands. He does acknowledge, however, that his record with the media is of someone unable to give straight answers or a single clear message: “My instincts went toward nuance, not sound bites.”
He gives, without the subsequent Hollywood treatment, a raw account of his role, disguised as a rather plump woman, in the special forces’ overnight sally into Beirut, to “take out” three architects of the Black September massacre of Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics. There’s a troubling recollection of the near-catastrophic Yom Kippur War, in which Israel lost 2,800 men and, particularly relevant at this time, he recalls the tension — and the reasons for it — within the Cabinet prior to “Operation Cast Lead” across the border into Gaza in 2007 against Hamas’s rocket attacks.
Unsurprisingly, he ruminates at length on the unsuccessful summit at Camp David in 2000, which he had pressed President Clinton to host and at which even the most generous of his offers to Yasser Arafat were met with a blank No! For the Economist, Barak emerged as a tragic figure — bold to the point of recklessness, desperate to succeed and seemingly flabbergasted to be turned down when he offered 90 per cent of the West Bank, 100 per cent of Gaza, a foothold in East Jerusalem and a symbolic return of some Palestinian refugees.
Barak was said by his critics to have locked himself in his cabin at Camp David during Clinton’s temporary absence, refusing to engage with the Palestinians. He himself admits that he absented himself deliberately for three days, running around Camp David in the sneakers he had thoughtfully brought with him, rather than hear another “No” from Arafat. The Palestinians claimed that Barak never engaged with Arafat directly, refused to put his ideas for a settlement in writing, never really intended to negotiate seriously and was not trusted by Arafat.
For all his military achievements (he is Israel’s most decorated soldier, of which he is immensely proud), Barak is an ardent peacenik, an opponent of Israel’s continued occupation, which he believes has harmed Jews as much as it has Palestinian Arabs, and a vociferous critic of the settlement movement.
The likelihood of Israel again producing a leader with an agenda and philosophy so amenable to Palestinian rights is most unlikely. In the end, Barak might not have won support at home, but Arafat at Camp David threw away the chance of negotiating the best settlement any Palestinian leader is ever likely to achieve.
Geoffrey D Paul is a former editor of the JC