any business involvement that could present a conflict of interest now that I had

/ BARAK / 110 any business involvement that could present a conflict of interest now that I had left. Frankly, I saw nothing wrong with earning money through honest endeavor, and using the proceeds to provide economic security for myself and my family, and to give our grandchildren a better start in life than Nava’s or my own parents had been able to do. In the end, we didn’t move to Kfar Shmaryahu. But that was because of an even more profound change in my life: I separated from Nava, after more than 30 years together. When we had begun plans to move, I laughed off a warning from a psychologist friend of mine that decisions like building a new house could lead to a deeper reassessment of your life. But that is at least in part what happened. There were also other changes that caused me to stop and take stock. I was no longer Prime Minister. My father had passed away soon after I left office. Professionally, I was exploring new areas and developing new interests. Nava and I had been happily married since our twenties. We had three wonderful daughters, and a first grandchild. Yet the more I thought about where we were in our lives, the more I felt our future paths were pulling us in different directions. For both of us, the separation was difficult, though it was made a bit less painful because Nava knew that it had nothing to do with another woman, or another relationship. I did imagine that I might one day meet someone else. But I was equally prepared for it not happening. I certainly didn’t expect it any time soon. When it did, it began by accident. A few weeks after our separation, I was visiting the Knesset for a discussion about fixing Israel’s broken electoral system. In the audience was a member of one of the civic associations pressing for reform: Nili Priell, my first, and only, serious girlfriend before I met Nava. We spoke for a few minutes afterwards. We agreed to meet again, and catch up with each other’s lives, a week or so later. Both of us now had grown children. We were both on our own. There is, I assume for everyone, something impossible to replicate about a first love. Nili and I were given an unlikely second chance. That seemed to me an extraordinary gift. It still does. Yet if my personal life seemed full of new promise, the same could not be said of the country I’d served for my whole adult life, or of the political party I'd led into government. The continuing construction of the security fence along the West Bank finally did begin to reduce the sheer number of Palestinian attacks: from nearly 50 in 2002, to about half that number in 2003. But the suicide bombers who did get through — from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s “Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ 396 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028244