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January 6, 2001 

JERUSALEM, JAN 6 (AP) - Desperately behind in the polls just weeks before elections, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is turning to elder statesman and party rival Shimon Peres in a bid to woo back voters who have spurned him during the months of violence with the Palestinians.

On Friday, the two sang side-by-side as balloons fell around them at a joint campaign appearance that would have seemed unthinkable two weeks ago - when Peres, a former premier and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, mounted a brief and failed campaign to run against Barak.

In a joint interview later on Israel TV, Barak suggested Peres - who has been largely marginalized as Barak's "regional cooperation minister" - would hold a more senior position if he is re-elected Feb. 6. Peres pledged to support Barak against his hawkish opponent Ariel Sharon, who has built a tremendous lead over the beleaguered premier in the polls.

"I am convinced we can and must work together for the peace of the country," Peres said, grinning.

Barak promised that "together, we will overcome."

But some in Barak's Labor party are starting to wonder whether it's possible.

In a Gallup poll published in the Maariv daily, 50 percent of 640 respondents said they would vote for Sharon, and 22 percent said they would back Barak. In a Dahaf poll in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, 50 percent of 510 respondents said they supported Sharon, and 32 percent said they would vote for Barak. Both had error margins of 4.5 percentage points.

Some analysts have attributed Sharon's steadily widening lead to dissatisfaction with Barak's inability to suppress the Palestinian uprising that began in late September. Although most of the roughly 360 people killed have been Palestinians, the unrest has badly shaken and angered Israelis.

Barak has also been criticized by many, including some of his Cabinet ministers, for going too far in the current round of last-ditch peace talks with the Palestinians - such as his willingness to cede parts of Jerusalem, including most of the Old City and a key holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif.

Indeed, Barak has been widely assailed for pursuing such a comprehensive accord while enjoying only minority support in parliament and in the middle of an election campaign.

But the Dahaf survey attributed Barak's poor showing largely to his personality - he is perceived by many as aloof, clumsy and insensitive - and his flip-flop on key promises, such as drafting Jewish seminary students who are exempt from army service.

"Barak wants to sell a historic and traumatic peace agreement to a public that would not buy a used car from him," wrote Hemi Shalev in Maariv.

Israel's Channel 2 TV quoted two unidentified Cabinet ministers as saying that Barak should step down and allow Labor to field Peres, who has a good chance of beating Sharon, according to the polls.

Peres, who has failed to win the premiership in six attempts, has nevertheless served as prime minister on three occasions, and has been an architect of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Sharon has been striving to portray himself as a born-again centrist, and in interviews Friday he insisted that he, too, would pursue peace with the Palestinians.

But he refused to give specifics. "The public knows me and knows I can bring peace ... because I am committed to peace," Sharon said.

He said he would work to form a "unity government" with Barak if elected - a partnership that he described as a "condition for achieving peace, for achieving security and bringing a certain harmony in our lives."

Despite such overtures, Barak's campaign ran an anti-Sharon advertisement in the Arab-Israeli press this week that showed a picture of Palestinians killed by Israeli-allied Lebanese Christian militiamen during a massacre at Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when Sharon was defense minister.

Arab-Israelis, a key Labor constituency who make up a fifth of the electorate, abandoned Barak after 13 of their number were killed by police during October riots expressing solidarity with the Palestinians.

Sharon denounced the ad as "inflammatory." At the time, he told Israel TV Friday, "I couldn't foresee that Christians would kill or massacre Muslims."

Labor Party officials said they were considering altering the ad.