Epstein Secrets

212 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011683 Middle East Affairs, and four years later the United Nations envoy, Count Folke Bernadotte. “Why are you so strident,” Shamir asked me, only half-jokingly, after ’'d insisted on joining a government discussion and pressing several intelligence matters. “It’s because I’ve rea

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011754 votes: one for a party list and one for a directly elected Prime Minister. This would be a personal test, an opportunity for Shimon to build on the still-tenuous achievement of Oslo and finally secure the endorsement of the Israeli people. It seemed, for a while, I might even hav

had made Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres. Though the two men had grown to respect each another over the years, Rabin neither trusted, nor much liked, Shimon. In fact, though Peres’s support inside Labor had secured him the foreign ministry, Rabin had stipulated that all peace talks would remain under his

her West Bank redeployments meandered ahead. We also discussed in detail how a unity government would work. We agreed it would be presented, like the Shamir-Peres partnership in 1984, as a cross- party response to an important challenge for the country: in this case, security and the peace process. I woul

’d agree on a unity government. To my amusement, if not altogether to my surprise, I got word that Bibi was putting out separate political feelers to Shimon Peres. But before long, it became clear there was a specific political motivation behind his approaching me. It was indeed the peace process. But it

And while I did make a brief attempt to return as party leader later in the year, when it was clear I wasn’t going to win, I threw my support behind Shimon and against the other challenger, the longtime labor- union leader Amir Peretz, who was running on a platform to take Labor out of Sharon’s governmen

r 212 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028060 Middle East Affairs, and four years later the United Nations envoy, Count Folke Bernadotte. "Why are you so strident," Shamir asked me, only half-jokingly, after I'd insisted on joining a government discussion and pressing several intelligence matters. "It's because I've rea

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028131 votes: one for a party list and one for a directly elected Prime Minister. This would be a personal test, an opportunity for Shimon to build on the still-tenuous achievement of Oslo and finally secure the endorsement of the Israeli people. It seemed, for a while, I might even have

had made Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres. Though the two men had grown to respect each another over the years, Rabin neither trusted, nor much liked, Shimon. In fact, though Peres's support inside Labor had secured him the foreign ministry, Rabin had stipulated that all peace talks would remain under his

her West Bank redeployments meandered ahead. We also discussed in detail how a unity government would work. We agreed it would be presented, like the Shamir-Peres partnership in 1984, as a cross- party response to an important challenge for the country: in this case, security and the peace process. I woul

'd agree on a unity government. To my amusement, if not altogether to my surprise, I got word that Bibi was putting out separate political feelers to Shimon Peres. But before long, it became clear there was a specific political motivation behind his approaching me. It was indeed the peace process. But it

GHT_028163 / BARAK / 30 I'd tried not to pay too much attention to newspaper polls during the campaign, perhaps because even the "good" ones, to use Shimon's phrase, had me with just a narrow lead, with Yitzhik Mordechai's 10 or 11 percent still likely to prevent outright victory in the first round. But