(Jpost).Labor chairman Ehud Barak has called Labor MKs in recent days and told them that the party should join a national unity government led by Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu, sources close to Barak said Sunday.
Barak's associates confirmed a Channel 2 report that he had called Labor MKs to check whether he could obtain a majority in the faction for joining the government, but that he might try to bring Labor into the coalition without his faction's support.
"We have to go in," Barak told the MKs. "Be on my side. I don't care if I don't have a majority in the faction. I can pass it in the central committee."
A source close to Barak said the party leader felt it would be better for the country and for himself to remain defense minister, and that it was now a matter of persuading his party that this would not harm Labor.
The fact that Kadima leader Tzipi Livni would be opposition leader and that Labor could at best play second-fiddle in the opposition had to be taken into account, the source said.
The Channel 2 report said that National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon supported Barak's effort to join the government. But Ben-Eliezer denied the report, and even MK Orit Noked, considered the Labor MK most in favor of joining the government, said she believed Labor's downfall from 19 seats to 13 required that the party remain in the opposition.
