Barak's foreign policy and its attendant failures…

Barak's foreign policy and its attendant failures erode his position at home.

He had begun the year with a comfortable coalition majority of sixty-eight in the one hundred and twenty-member Knesset but his determination to take the peace process forward antagonizes his more hawkish coalition partners.

In addition, constant friction between the secular Meretz party, which controls the Education Ministry, and the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which demands more funding and greater autonomy for its network of religious schools, saps the coalition's strength.

In early July Shas, the National Religious Party, and Yisrael ba-Aliyah leave the coalition, accusing Barak of being ready to concede too much to the Palestinians.

Meretz, which supports Barak's peace moves, had already withdrawn from the government over its differences with Shas, and after Barak returns from Camp David, Foreign Minister David Levy resigns, pulling his Gesher party out of the coalition.

Barak is then left with a minority coalition of only 40 Knesset members.

Elections for a new president take place in the Knesset on July 31, and in a surprising result, indicative of the weakness of Barak's governing coalition, Likud's Moshe Katzav defeats One Israel's elder statesman, Shimon Peres, by 63 votes to 57.

Barak narrowly wins a vote of confidence in the Knesset.