Israel’s Ehud Barak Returns to Politics at Head of New Party

(Bloomberg) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whose premiership went down in flames with the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising and the failure of U.S.-led peace talks, is making a political comeback ahead of the Sept. 17 election.

Barak said he’s going to create a new party in an effort to topple the current Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Former military chief Benny Gantz, whose new Blue & White bloc received as many parliamentary seats as Netanyahu’s Likud in the April election, warned that Barak will siphon off votes from his camp, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Barak, who is also an ex-military chief, was elected in May 1999, then was defeated by Ariel Sharon in a 2001 vote. He resigned from politics, then returned to lead Labor and serve as defense minister in the governments of Ehud Olmert and Netanyahu. He split off from Labor in 2011, then quit politics again the following year.

He may try to team up with Labor on a joint list for the September ballot, and has approached former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to join his new party, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

Livni’s a onetime peace negotiator and firm believer in the two-state solution who left politics earlier this year after she was unceremoniously dumped from a Labor-led bloc.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, is exploring the possibility of canceling the repeat election he engineered after failing to form a coalition following the April ballot -- on condition he can form a national unity government. But the presumptive partner in such a coalition, Blue & White, has said Netanyahu must first step down and let it lead a broad-based government.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amy Teibel in Jerusalem at ateibel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Michael S. Arnold, Alisa Odenheimer

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