Ehud Barak, centrists leave Israel's Labor Party

(01-18) 04:00 PST Jerusalem - --

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak bolted from the Labor Party on Monday to form a new centrist faction in the governing coalition, splitting the party he had led and leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a smaller but more stable parliamentary majority.

The step by Barak, taken with Netanyahu's prior knowledge, cut him loose from more left-leaning Labor figures who had challenged his leadership and criticized what they called his failure to push harder for progress in peace efforts.

The move led to the resignation of three Labor Party ministers who had threatened to pull out of the government over the handling of peace talks with the Palestinians, bolstering more conservative elements in the coalition and deepening doubts about prospects for peace.

Netanyahu said that his government had been strengthened and that "the whole world and the Palestinians know that this government will be here in the coming years and that peace negotiations have to be conducted with it."

Announcing his decision at a news conference with four Labor legislators who joined him, Barak said there had been a "never-ending quarrel within the party" and "a constant drift to the left and again to the left."

He said his new group, called Independence, would be "a faction, a movement and in the future a party that will be centrist, Zionist and democratic."

Labor ministers Isaac Herzog, Avishai Braverman and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer announced their resignations in quick succession after Barak's move. That left Netanyahu with the backing of 66 lawmakers in the 120-member parliament, a coalition dominated by rightist and religious parties that oppose significant concessions to the Palestinians.

Labor, which held 13 seats, is now down to eight.

The split in Labor was a new low point for a party that had dominated Israeli politics for decades and produced successive prime ministers, starting with the country's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, and including Yitzhak Rabin, slain in 1995 by an opponent of his accords with the Palestinians. Barak was Labor's last prime minister, from 1999 to 2001, but was voted out after his efforts to conclude a peace deal with the Palestinians failed.

This article appeared on page A - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle