Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday launched his first public broadside against the dovish critics of his leadership in the Labor Party, accusing them of trying to wreck the party's chances of winning the next election, reported Haaretz.
Most of Barak's anger was directed at acting Interior Minister Haim Ramon, who an hour earlier criticized the prime minister at the same meeting of the political secretariat of the United Kibbutz Movement (Takam).
Individuals who speak out like that have no place in the government, Barak said. Addressing the Labor doves as a group, Barak said: "We don't need to supply the Likud with election advertisements ... All this drivel from the left must be silenced ... A party that wants to survive doesn't behave like this."
The harsh public exchanges are a further blow to relations between the prime minister and the doves - mainly ministers Ramon and Shimon Peres, and MKs Uzi Baram and Avraham Burg, said the daily.
A senior Labor source told the paper that the gloves are off now, the odds are raised of the group fielding a candidate of its own to oppose the prime minister in party leadership elections.
Barak has already made it clear he does not want open primaries and would prefer the Labor leader to be elected via party institutions. Burg and Baram have said if the party's Knesset list is not chosen through primaries, they will not stand for election. Both have declined to accept any positions in Labor's election headquarters, saying they would find it difficult to market Barak's policies.
"The color returns to the cheeks of Labor," the paper quoted Barak as saying, "not from opposing the Likud, but from in-fighting. We need to learn our lesson and sit in closed rooms to discuss things, and then come out united."
On the other side of the political divide, Shas and United Torah Judaism are trying to force the right-wing bloc into voting for a temporary measure to delay the conscription of yeshiva (religious) students by another year, according to Haaretz – Albawaba.com
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
