ill-fated Israeli war in Lebanon since 1982, was the reason I ultimately found

/ BARAK / 113 ill-fated Israeli war in Lebanon since 1982, was the reason I ultimately found myself back in the Israeli government. It began on July 12, 2006, when Hizbollah fired rockets from southern Lebanon as cover for an ambush of two Israeli Humvees on our side of the border. Two soldiers were killed, and two others abducted. A few hours later, when an Israeli armored unit crossed to look for the kidnapped soldiers, an explosive charge blew up one of our tanks, killing four of its crew members. Arik was no longer Prime Minister by then. With Bibi marshalling opposition inside the Likud to the Gaza disenagegment, he had formed a new centrist party called Kadima, along with prominent Likud moderates and buttressed by a Labor heavyweight: Shimon Peres. But before the election, Arik suffered a pair of strokes, lapsing into a coma from which he would never emerge. His notional deputy, the veteran Likud politician and former Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, found himself as Prime Minister. Kadima did comfortably win the May election. It ended up with 29 seats, followed by Labor with 19 and leaving the Netanyahu-led Likud with only 12. Olmert formed a coalition, including Labor, which had undeniable political ballast: Shimon was one of his deputy Prime Ministers, along with Haim Ramon. The gifted lawyer, longtime Likudnik and strong backer of the Gaza plan, Tzipi Livni, was Foreign Minister. Amir Peretz, as head of Labor, was given the Defense Ministry. But without Sharon himself at the helm, the government was now about to face a military crisis with virtually no military experience around the cabinet table. Olmert called an emergency cabinet meeting on the evening of the Hizbollah attack, and just before it was due to convene, my phone rang. It was Shimon, who, though with no first-hand army experience, did at least have the political experience in war that none of Olmert’s other ministers could offer. He’d been by Ben-Gurion’s side during the 1956 war, had been in Golda’s government in 1967, and was Defense Minister after the 1973 war, through Entebbe, until Begin’s defeated Labor in the 1977 election. Despite our own battles inside Labor, Shimon and I had become closer again of late, especially after I’d supported him in his last 399 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028247