Barak will not quit over Lebanon war report

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak today said he would not quit Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government over its handling of the 2006 Lebanon war – but would stay on to redress problems in the military that the fighting exposed.

Barak’s announcement at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting removed any immediate threat to the survival of Olmert’s government as it pursues its declared goal of signing a peace treaty with the Palestinians this year.

Barak had said before joining the coalition in June that he would push for Olmert’s resignation or early elections after a war inquiry delivered its final report.

The report, delivered last Wednesday, left Olmert relatively unscathed, but criticised the government and the army for “serious failings and flaws” in the month long war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

If Barak were to have pulled his Labour Party’s 19-member faction out of the coalition, Olmert would have been stripped of his parliamentary majority and likely forced to call an election. His coalition now controls 67 of parliament’s 120 seats.

But with Labour trailing badly in public opinion polls, Barak apparently decided his party’s political fortunes – and his own – would be better served by remaining in the government.

Barak hopes to reclaim the premiership he briefly held before losing it in early 2001, but the latest polls show that if elections were held today, hawkish opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party would defeat both Barak and Olmert.