Emerging from arduous interparty negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak has presented his nation -- and a waiting world -- with a rainbow coalition whose sweeping diversity may just be what it takes to revive the dormant Middle East peace process.
Following his landslide victory over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu May 17, Mr. Barak spent six weeks coaxing and bargaining with a multitude of parties to gain the 61 seats necessary to claim a majority in Israel's 120-member Parliament, the Knesset. At this point, Mr. Barak has managed to give himself a comfortable cushion with 75 seats.
With the July 8 deadline for forming a government looming, Mr. Barak clinched victory when he signed a coalition deal June 30 with the powerful ultra-Orthodox Shas, a dovish group that is the largest religious party and, with 17 seats, the third-largest party in Parliament. Some Labor Party members expressed dismay at having to share power with a party that has been accused of seeking to create a Jewish fundamentalist state. However, the pact has enabled Mr. Barak to exclude from the government the Likud bloc, whose hardline nationalist positions would have undermined the new leader's declared aim of quickly reaching peace agreements with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.