Labor party chairman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is not a Knesset Member, initialed a deal with Prime Minister-designate and Kadima chairperson Tzipi Livni shortly before the beginning of the Sukkot holiday Monday afternoon. However, the ink was barely dry when Labor MK Ofir Pines Paz, considered the "conscience" of the party, blasted it as "pathetic" and "lacking vision." <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

Barak essentially won promises for increased personal stature while abandoning party platform principles. Livni remains Foreign Minister while trying to form a government and replace Ehud Olmert as Prime Minister. She promised Barak he would inherit her spot as Deputy Prime Minister and would be considered the most senior minister. He did not receive his demand to be in charge of negotiations with <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Syria.

 

He gained the right for Labor to veto proposed bills involving the judicial system but failed to win the right for Labor to place an additional delegate on the Judicial Appointments Committee.

 

Labor also failed to be given its demands for increases in the budget for social projects that are part of its agenda.

 

MK Pines-Paz, who last year quit as minister after Labor agreed to allow Israel Is Our Home (Yisrael Beiteinu) chairman Avigdor Lieberman to join the government and become a minister, lambasted the Barak-Livni deal. "This is a survival deal which lacks vision, guidelines and a plan of action," he stated.

 

He pointed out that the agreement leaves Labor worse off than the current coalition pact. The MK charged that "most of the party's fundamental demands were left unanswered, or were only marginally answered, and capitulation is evident in most clauses." Freezing a hike in university tuition fees was the only social action that Livni accepted.

 

Although Livni secured Labor's preliminary agreement for a coalition, she still has barely two weeks left in which to win over Shas  to complete a new  government, unless she succeeds in forming a more leftist coalition with Meretz and Arab MKs.